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Producers' Bios
Alexander
Kronemer, Executive Producer
Michael Wolfe,
Executive Producer
Alexander Kronemer, Executive Producer
 Alexander
Kronemer is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation
and Executive Producer for Cities of Light. He is a writer,
lecturer, and documentary producer focusing on religious
diversity, Islam, and cross-cultural understanding. He has a
Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard
University, where his research concentrated on the
philosophy of religion and comparative religion. In 1996, he
was awarded a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship for Middle East
and Islamic Studies, which funded him for a study tour of
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Kronemer has published essays in numerous newspapers and
journals, including The Southern Quarterly,
Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times,
San Jose Mercury News, Beliefnet.com, and The
Washington Post. His articles have been included in
several book anthologies, including the September 11
memorial book, Up From the Ashes (2001) and Wilber
Prize winner, Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim
Their Faith (2002).
His work has been supported by numerous grants, including
the World Economic Forum, U.S. Institute of Peace, National
Endowment for the Humanities, Packard Foundation,
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Montgomery County
Commission on the Humanities, and a Halberstam Writing
Fellowship.
As a lecturer, he has delivered talks on religious diversity
and Islam for the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S.
Department of State, FBI, World Affairs Council and National
Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. He has also spoken at many
universities, including the University of Pennsylvania,
Harvard, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Penn State, and for
numerous private corporations, including Nike, Aetna, and
Walt Disney World.
He has appeared as a CNN commentator on several occasions,
such as during CNN’s historic live coverage of the Hajj in
1998, which was broadcast to 400 million viewers. He has
also participated in many radio interviews, such as on NPR
and the Voice of America.
In 2000, Kronemer served a one-year appointment at the
Bureau of Human Rights in the U.S. Department of State,
focusing on the Middle East and Islam. During that year, Kronemer also served as a delegate to the United Nations
Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland.
He is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation, a
non-profit corporation whose mission is to help bring peace
through the media by creating better understanding of Islam
and the world's other faiths and spiritual traditions. He
was co-creator and co-producer of the popular PBS
documentary, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.
The film aired as a national broadcast on PBS and as
subsequent international broadcasts on National Geographical
International. It received a Cine Special Jury Award for
Best Professional Documentary in the category of People and
Places. With Unity Productions, Kronemer continues to
produce documentaries for PBS and other broadcasters in the
U.S. and abroad.
Michael Wolfe, Executive Producer
 Michael
Wolfe is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation and
Executive Producer for Cities of Light. He is an
author of books of poetry, fiction, travel, and history.
Wolfe’s writing has appeared in many magazines and has been
recognized by the Academy of American Poets, National
Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Commission, and
American Travel Writers Association. He has read and
lectured at Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo,
Princeton, and many other universities. He has taught
Writing and English at Phillips Exeter and Phillips Andover
Academies, the California State Summer School for the Arts,
and at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a
degree in Classics from Wesleyan University. For many years,
he was the publisher of Tombouctou Books, Bolinas, CA.
Wolfe was a MacDowell Colony resident in poetry in
1968. He received an Amy Lowell Traveling Poets Scholarship
in 1970, which was renewed for two more years. During this
time, he traveled and wrote in North and West Africa. His
first books of poetry (World Your Own, Threshold),
fiction, (Invisible Weapons, Creative Arts
Publishing), and travel (In Morocco, Sombre Reptiles)
derive from this period. In the 1980s, he returned to North
Africa several more times. In 1990, he performed the
pilgrimage to Mecca.
For 15 years, Wolfe was sole publisher of Tombouctou Books,
a small press enterprise located in Bolinas, CA, that
published works of poetry and avant garde prose. These
include: The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll; two
books of fiction by the Moroccan storyteller Mohammed Mrabet;
and American fiction by Douglas Woolf, Lucia Berlin, Bobbie
Louise Hawkins, Steve Emerson, and Paul Bowles's final
collection of short stories, Unwelcome Words.
Wolfe's first works on Islam were a pair of books from Grove
Press on the pilgrimage to Mecca: The Hadj (1993), a
first-person travel account; and One Thousand Roads to
Mecca (1997), an anthology of 10 centuries of travelers
writing about the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, he edited a collection of
essays by American Muslims called Taking Back Islam:
American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith (Rodale Press, 2002). Taking Back Islam won the 2003 annual Wilbur Award
for "Best Book of the year on a Religious Theme." He is
currently working on a novel and translating a group of
epitaphs from the Greek Anthology. He recently completed a
fourth volume of poetry, entitled Digging Up Russia.
In April 1997, Wolfe hosted a televised account of the Hajj
from Mecca for Ted Koppel's Nightline on ABC. The
program was nominated for Peabody, Emmy, George Polk, and
National Press Club Awards. It won the annual Media Award
from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In February 2003,
Wolfe worked with CNN-International television news reporter
Zain Verjee to produce a new half-hour documentary on the
Hajj.
Wolfe has been featured on hundreds of regional and national
radio talk shows. He writes an occasional column for
Beliefnet, a web journal of the world’s religions.
In 1999, Wolfe helped found an educational media foundation
focused on promoting peace through the media, Unity
Productions Foundation. In 2002, UPF produced its first
full-length film, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, a
two-hour television documentary on the life and times of the
Prophet Muhammad. Wolfe co-created, co-produced, and
co-executive edited the film. It aired as a national
broadcast on PBS and as subsequent international broadcasts
on National Geographical International. The film received a
Cine Special Jury Award for Best Professional Documentary in
its category of People and Places. With Unity Productions,
Wolfe continues to produce documentaries for PBS and other
broadcasters in the U.S. and abroad. Back to
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