Gary Snyder is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, environmentalist and teacher. Snyder was a major figure in the Beat movement and, after spending many years in a Japanese monastery, helped to make Zen more widely known in the West. His many books include Turtle Island, Earth House Hold, A Place in Space, The Real Work, and The Practice of the Wild. His article, "On the Path, Off the Trail," appears in Light From The East: Modern Western Encounters with Eastern Traditions .