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Mark L Stewart

Mark L Stewart

Mark Stewart is an American non-fiction author and journalist with more than 200 books to his credit as a writer and editor. He is best known for his biographies of athletes and entertainers, as well as books on The Alamo, The Indian Removal Act, PBS’s Mummy Road Show, and young adult series on New York and New Jersey. Stewart has written over 1,500 athlete bios for print and online media. He served as managing editor for several trade and consumer magazines, including Racquet, MAR, Radius and EDGE—the leading lifestyle magazine in New Jersey—for 15 years. Currently, he runs the NJSports dotcom research web site and is a founding member of Garden State Greats, a non-profit that celebrates the history and culture of New Jersey sports and supports athletic programs in the state's underserved areas.

Background

Stewart was born in New York City and adopted by a publishing family. His mother, Helen E. Markel, was a freelance journalist who later served as articles editor for Ladies Home Journal and McCall’s. His father, John G. Stewart, was an editor at The New York Times. His grandfather, Lester Markel, who established the International Press Institute in 1951 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1953, was Sunday Editor of The New York Times from 1923 to 1964. Stewart later learned that his biological parents were also in the newspaper business, in the Midwest. He attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York and graduated with a degree in history from Duke University in 1984.

Branding & Marketing

Beginning in the 1990s, Stewart’s business writing led to work on multiple branding and marketing projects, with corporate clients that included Disney, Sesame Street/CTW, Whole Foods, DuPont, Denny’s, Pizza Hut, Woodstock ’94, National Basketball Association, BMG, Zurich Reinsurance and the Southern California PGA. Stewart wrote and produced the 2015 documentary You Heard It Here First, narrated by Edward Asner, which won multiple awards, including Best Documentary at the Garden State Film Festival.

The William Wright Mansion

In 2021, Stewart and his wife, Sarah Converse Wilson, purchased the historic William Wright Mansion in Columbia, Pennsylvania. The Stewarts are just the sixth family to own the home since its construction, in 1795. Built by a wealthy Quaker family on the banks of the Susquehanna River, the structure served as the initial stop on the Underground Railroad in central Pennsylvania for many years. According to fellow abolitionist William Still, more than 1,000 escaped slaves launched their journey to freedom in Canada from the Wright house in the early 1800s. Stewart is a member of the team developing The Underground Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.