1961 — Born in Maryland.
1961–1964 — Early childhood divided between the United States, Britain and Moscow, USSR.
1964–1969 — Lived variously in Germany, Florida, Virginia and Rhode Island.
1969–1970 — Lived in Athens, Greece; attended Ursuline Academy and traveled in Greece and Israel.
1970–1974 — Lived in Rhode Island and later Coronado, California.
1974–1975 — Began surfing in California and Hawaii; attended the Paskowitz Surf Camp, surfing breaks from Malibu to Baja California.
1975–1977 — Attended high school in Northern Virginia.
1977 — Returned to Moscow, where he worked as a camp counselor; traveled to Leningrad.
1977–1978 — Attended Leysin American School in Switzerland on a basketball-related work-study program and was recognized as the school’s most athletic male student. Traveled in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France.
1978 — Graduated from Leysin American School. Worked in Moscow and began studies at American University in Washington, D.C.
1979 — Worked in the Press and Cultural Section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, collecting and editing TASS and AP wire reports for the ambassador. Studied Russian and traveled to Helsinki. Later traveled in China and the USSR and studied French at the Alliance Française and the Sorbonne in Paris. Traveled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
1980 — Studied at American University; worked in construction in Northern Virginia; traveled in Yugoslavia more extensively.
1981–1982 — Attended George Washington University. Worked at the national headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service and served as a guide for a U.S.-USSR working group on space biology.
1982 — Moved to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where he taught English.
1983 — Moved to Sosúa on the Dominican Republic’s north coast, where he managed a windsurfing and sailing school, giving instruction in three languages. Later lived and worked in San Diego, California, before returning to Washington.
1983–1984 — Attended George Washington University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs in May 1984.
1984 — Lived and worked in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, including work on a commercial trawler.
1985 — Lived and worked in Northern Virginia before driving across the country to California.
1985–1986 — Lived in San Francisco, where he surfed Ocean Beach.
1986–1987 — Lived in the New York area and worked in international express delivery sales.
1987–1989 — Lived in Northern Virginia and worked as an editor on proposed country supplements, traveling to Costa Rica and Haiti with The Washington Post and Campaigns & Elections magazine credentials.
1989 — Published the novel Freeplay.
1989–1993 — Lived in Arlington, Virginia, while working in a variety of jobs and developing his writing and publishing projects.
1990–1991 — Traveled extensively in Europe, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona.
1992 — Published Stasi Slut. Attended PhenomiCon in Atlanta, where he met writers and publishers including Bob Black, Adam Parfrey, Jim Keith and Kenn Thomas.
1993–2000 — Lived in Bowie, Maryland, while pursuing creative projects in the Washington-Baltimore area. Worked variously as a bookseller, where he was unionized with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and as a legal researcher, notably using French-language newspapers and older legal texts in collections at the Library of Congress.
1994–1999 — Published the underground journal Extraphile, eventually producing ten issues.
1995 — Traveled to Hong Kong; spoke at the Haçienda in Manchester, England.
1996 — Issued the first samizdat edition of Persian Love, an adaptation of Omar Khayyam, accompanied by an underground cassette recording.
1997 — Spent three weeks in Paris and published Guy Debord—Revolutionary, the first biography of Guy Debord in any language. Interviewed Ignacio Ramonet about Geopolitics of Chaos. Published the pamphlet Aphorisms Against Work.
1998 — Published The Arch Conspirator and a translation of Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord’s The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy. Published the pamphlet Open Letter to the Citizens of Poland. Continued experimental audio and publishing projects.
1999 — Published his translation of Paul Lafargue’s The Right to Be Lazy, a second edition of Aphorisms Against Work, and the pamphlet The Neo-Catiline Conspiracy for the Universal Cancellation of Debt. Co-founded the Baltimore-Washington Psychogeography Association and the Campaign for Nobody.
2000 — Published the final issue of Extraphile; released the CD On the Line with Len Bracken and began filming The Lazy Ones. Received a Professional Editing Certificate from George Washington University. His first film, The Science of Spectacular Domination and the Decolonization of Daily Life, screened in Washington. Joined the Bureau of National Affairs as a copy editor.
2001 — Moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. Traveled to Quebec with the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists and later to Riga, Latvia for a citywide anti-consumerism exhibit.
2002 — Published Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror. Presented his General Theory of Civil War at Johns Hopkins University.
2003 — The Lazy Ones first screened at the Baltimore Anarchist Book Fair. Published the 62-page pamphlet Dialectical Hedonism. Gave two talks at the Aquarium L-13 art gallery in London: one on 9/11, another on dialectical hedonism that included a tango performance.
2004 — The Lazy Ones screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with his first photography exhibition.
2005 — Traveled extensively in China and France. First published the novel Snitch Jacket.
2006 — Persian Love appeared for the first time in book form. Published the essay “New China Syndrome” in Principia Dialectica. Traveled to Los Angeles and met with film producer Ted Field.
2007 — Reported on the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve for the Bureau of National Affairs. Published a revised edition of Snitch Jacket.
2008 — Volunteered as an assistant news producer at WPFW radio. His short story “Subprime Girl” appeared in HunterGatheress Journal.
2009 — Traveled to Toronto, Canada.
2010–2018 — Covered international trade law for the Bureau of National Affairs, later Bloomberg Law.
2011 — Covered the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Honolulu and surfed Oahu’s North Shore.
2012 — Contributed “Schmitt, Ergenekon and the Neocons” to The Dual State: Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt and the National Security Complex, edited by Eric Wilson (pp. 273–296). Traveled in France and spoke at the National Press Club on the French presidential transition.
2013–2019 — Wrote, directed and filmed The Bourgeois Youth of Guy Debord, an 82-minute experimental biographical documentary based on his 1997 book Guy Debord—Revolutionary. Filmed at locations across France, the film combines biography with a fictional dialogue between the biographer and the muse Clio, incorporating animation, music and dramatic performance. Michael Zarowny portrays an elderly Debord reflecting on his youth; Laura Salisbury voices Clio, and Bracken appears as the biographer.
2013 — Met philosopher Michel Onfray in Caen.
2014 — Traveled to Amsterdam and Rotterdam and gave a roundtable briefing on trans-Atlantic trade negotiations at Georgetown University.
2015 — Selected for the Sixth China-United States Journalists Exchange organized by the East-West Center. Covered the final negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Atlanta. Traveled again in France; published the fifth edition of The East Is Black (Stasi Slut) and released a video edition of Persian Love.
2016 — Returned to Nice, France.
2018 — Left Bloomberg Law after nearly two decades with the organization and its predecessor, the Bureau of National Affairs.
2019 — Traveled to Nice and Paris; published New China Syndrome: The Early Rise of Red Capitalism 1979–2005 in book form.
2020 — Traveled to Paris. The Bourgeois Youth of Guy Debord debuted at the Nice International Film Festival, held June 22–26.