Jaimal Yogis

Jaimal Yogis is an American author and screenwriter. A graduate of Columbia Journalism school in New York, Yogis began his career as a journalist, writing for publications like San Francisco Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. His pieces won awards such as the Leslie Rachel Sanders Award for Social Justice Reporting and a Maggie Award for Best Feature. His AFAR Magazine piece on the first female surfers of Bangladesh inspired the documentary, The Most Fearless, by Heather Kessinger, which Yogis later helped write and produce. Yogis's first book, Saltwater Buddha, is a humorous coming-of-age memoir that recounts running away to Maui to learn to surf and living in a Zen Buddhist monastery. The book was internationally praised, translated into numerous languages, and turned into a feature documentary film. His second book, The Fear Project, is a journalistic and scientific book that was also translated into numerous languages and featured in publications like Outside, Forbes, and Oprah. To write the book, Yogis interviewed many of the world's top scientists, psychologists, and athletes about what fear is and how to live mindfully and courageously in spite of it . He also made himself a research guinea pig, pushing himself to dive with great white sharks and surf the famous, deadly surf break, Mavericks. Yogis's third book, All Our Waves Are Water, is a Harper Collins memoir that takes readers through his travels in the Himalayas, Indonesia, Mexico, Jerusalem, New York City, and beyond. Also widely praised, the book was named a "Best Beach Read of the Year" by the BBC and Publisher's Weekly called it "captivating" and "beautiful." Yogis lives in San Francisco with his wife, Amy DuRoss, and their three sons.