EUGENE– Pulitzer Prize recipient Gary Snyder, widely recognized as one of the nation’s most influential poets, will read on Thursday, March 9, at the University of Oregon as part of the Program in Creative Writing Reading Series.

Snyder’s reading will be held at 8 p.m. in Room 150 of Columbia Hall, 1215 E. 13th Ave. Tickets, required for admittance, are free and available to the public though limited in number. For any remaining tickets, visit the Creative Writing Program in Room 145 of Columbia Hall on campus.

A free panel discussion celebrating the legacy of Snyder’s work will be held from 10 a.m. until noon on Friday, March 10, in the Browsing Room of the UO Knight Library, 1501 Kincaid St. Panelists will include UO faculty as well as Snyder.

The UO Knight Library Press will offer a limited-edition broadside featuring a Snyder poem at the Thursday evening reading.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for "Turtle Island," Snyder is the author of 17 books of poetry and prose. His collections of poetry include "Riprap," "Axe Handles" and "Left Out in the Rain." His volumes of essays include "The Practice of the Wild," "A Place in Space" and "Earth House Hold."

Snyder has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His selected poems, "No Nature," was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. His book, "Mountains and River Without End," won the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 1997.

Born in 1930 in San Francisco and raised on small farms in Oregon and Washington, he studied literature and anthropology at Reed College in Portland. Graduate studies in Asian languages at the University of California at Berkeley led to his decision to move to Japan for 12 years. He intensively studied Zen Buddhism, researched and translated Zen texts and traveled throughout Asia during that time.

Since 1986, Snyder has taught at the University of California at Davis.

"Gary Snyder may yet prove the most American of us all," says reviewer Jedediah S. Purdy in writing about the newly released "The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry and Translation."

"Snyder’s prose poses a reminder by contrast of how often social criticism is crabbed and vindictive, and how much environmental thought is ascetic and angry," Purdy writes. "A high regard for sensual pleasure, all things festive, and the impulse to improve and enrich one’s life fill Snyder’s writing and gives it a peculiarly American grain. He is less concerned to establish that what he objects to is wrong than to plead that what he supports is better."

Snyder’s reading and the panel discussion are co-sponsored by the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts, the UO Knight Library, the Oregon Humanities Center, the UO Environmental Studies Program and the UO Bookstore.

For more information, call the Creative Writing Program at (541) 346-0544.

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