Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco on May 8, 1930. His first book, Riprap, published in 1959, has become a classic in American poetry, and he’s gone on to publish more than a dozen collections of poetry and prose. Practice of the Wild is one of the most influential books about the environment of the last fifty years. His recently completed long poem, Mountains and Rivers Without End, is broadly recognized as one of the greatest long poems in American literature, and his last book of poems, Danger on Peaks, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1997. He also has the distinction of being the first American to receive the Buddhism Transmission Award from the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation.