Gary Snyder is an American poet, Zen Buddhist, mountaineer, environment activist, and founding member of the Beat Generation. He has written 16 collections of poetry and prose, including Danger on Peaks, Mountains and Rivers Without End, The Practice of the Wild, Axe Handles, and Turtle Island. Described as “the Thoreau of the Beat Generation,” his work is rooted deeply in elements of nature and preservation. Since 1970 he has lived in the watershed of the South Yuba River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992, Snyder has been awarded the Bollingen Poetry Prize and the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. Snyder’s forthcoming collection is This Present Moment.