TOM STONE has pursued a multi-faceted career as a novelist, travel writer, historian, and stage- and screenplay writer.  Simultaneously, he has had a very successful career in the professional theater as a director, lighting designer, and stage manager.
     In his early years, he devoured the myths of Greece and Norway.  Later, he snapped up related books by Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Lawrence Durrell, Nikos Kazantzakis and Joseph Campbell—among many, many others.
     After graduating from Yale, where he gained a BA in English Literature and an addiction to the theater, he was able to first visit Greece as an assistant stage manager for Jerome Robbins’ ballet company.  He spent the next decade working as a stage manager and assistant director for Jerome Robbins and Harold Prince on the original productions of She Loves Me, Funny Girl, Fiddler On The Roof, and Cabaret as well as the now-legendary efforts of Robbins’ American Theatre Laboratory.

        In 1969, he took a sabbatical from Broadway with the intention of spending a single summer on one of the islands writing a novel.  Instead, he stayed twenty-two years, principally on the islands of Patmos and Crete and near the mainland capital of northern Greece, Thessaloniki.  In the process, he became a father of two, a teacher of English and Theater at Anatolia College in Northern Greece, and a lighting designer and director for the Greek National Theater.

        

With daughter, Samantha, at Patmos taverna, c. 1976     With son, Oliver, in Rethymnon, c. 1978

    While in Greece, Stone wrote and published his first novel, Armstrong, and numerous books and articles about living abroad.   These include The Essential Greek Handbook, Greece: An Illustrated History, Patmos: A History and Guide, and The Greek Food & Drink Book.
      In 1992, with his children in U.S. universities and his marriage moribund, he accept an offer by Harold Prince to become the Resident Director in London of Mr. Prince’s new, Broadway-bound musical. The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Subsequently, Mr. Stone directed the London company, starring Bebe Neuwirth.  Shortly afterwards, he directed the German-language version in Vienna.
      Upon returning to New York, Mr. Stone put Brian Stokes Mitchell into the cast of “Spider Woman” and then worked for a season with the Circle Repertory Company as casting director and stage manager.  But breaking back into the theater proved to be highly frustrating after so many years abroad, so when one of Mr. Stone’s short stories was optioned for a TV movie, he headed west.  He has since written six film scripts for hire, but as of now, none have been produced, including that initially-optioned short story.
    He is currently teaching English as a Second Language in the adult school system of Los Angeles, and occasionally lecturing on Greek history at Pierce College.  Since 2004, he has been most happily married to Iranian-born Farzaneh Eslami. 

    Stone's memoir of living on Patmos, The Summer of My Greek Tavérna, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2002 and was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Club in 2003.  It has been translated into several languages, including Dutch, German, Danish, Hebrew, and Mandarin (Taiwan).  His latest effort, Zeus: A Journey Across Greece in the Footsteps of a God, was published in February, 2008.
    Currently, he is working on a children’s book based on one of the most popular of the Greek myths.  It is tentatively titled The Curse of the Minotaur. 

*In the photo, President Kennedy is reaching up to shake Stone's hand as the Shah of  Iran and the Farah Diba of Iran look on.