Mark Sommer

Mark Sommer is a Humboldt County author, journalist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work centers on resilience, community, and living wholeheartedly. A fifty-year resident of the county, he built and maintained an off-grid homestead in the backcountry before settling in Westhaven, and he founded the Arcata-based Mainstream Media Project and the syndicated radio program A World of Possibilities, which won six international awards including recognition from the United Nations. He spent two decades as the U.S. correspondent for Inter Press Service in Rome. His 2026 novel Cherish: Love in a Season of Loss imagines a rural college town confronting a cyberwar-induced blackout, and he is publishing a series of memoirs under the imprint Hearts Broken Open.