Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Since the 1970s, he has frequently been described as the 'laureate of Deep Ecology'. From the 1950s on, he has published travel journals and essays from time to time. His work in his various roles reflects his immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has also translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. As a social critic, Snyder's views share something in common with Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Karl Hess, Aldo Leopold, and Karl Polanyi. Snyder was for many years in the faculty of the University of California, Davis, and for a time served on the California Arts Council. As a poet, early in his published years, he was often associated with the Beat Generation, sometimes with the San Francisco Renaissance, and sometimes deemed simply an independent.

Turtle Island won Gary Snyder the Pulitzer back in 1975, and remains, to this observer, his most completely realized work. The title comes from a Native American term for the continent of North America, and Snyder wants to reclaim the organic and holistic environmental harmony that once held sway here. Still, this is poetry, not diatribe. Snyder's key virtue isn't his political or philosophical vision, but his poetic articulation of that vision. Excellent.