Bill Porter assumes the pen name Red Pine for his translation work. He was born in Los Angeles in 1943, grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, served a tour of duty in the US Army, graduated from the University of California with a degree in anthropology, and attended graduate school at Columbia University before dropping out to move to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including two NEA translation fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN Translation Prize, and the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association. More recently, Porter received the 2018 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
