Gary Snyder

He is associated with the Beat Generation group of writers -- Jack Kerouac wrote about him as Japhy Ryder in the novel The Dharma Bums[?].

He was not a member of the original New York circle, but rather entered the scene through an association with Kenneth Rexroth[?]. Snyder performed at the famous poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 13, 1955.

Independently, a number of the Beats had become interested in Zen, but Snyder was one of the more serious (certainly one of the most academic) scholars of the subject. He engaged in graduate study of Asian languages at Berkeley, and for much of the 1960s he was living in Japan, continuing his studies in a Zen monastery.

In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection Turtle Island.

Since 1985, he has been a professor in the English department at the University of California, Davis.

External Links

• Gary Snyder at the UC Davis English Department (http://wwwenglish.ucdavis.edu/faculty/snyder/snyder.htm)