Barry Lopez was an essayist, author, and short-story writer who traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world. He is the author of Arctic Dreams, which received the National Book Award; Horizon, Of Wolves and Men, Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape; and eight works of fiction, including Outside, Light Action in the Caribbean, Field Notes, and Resistance. He is the author of Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects with Julia Martin. His essays are collected in two books, Crossing Open Ground and About This Life. Lopez lived in western Oregon.
Julia Martin is a South African writer and a professor of English at the University of the Western Cape. In addition to academic work in ecocriticism, she writes creative nonfiction with a particular interest in metaphors of interconnectedness and the representation of place. She is the author of Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects with Barry Lopez, A Millimetre of Dust: Visiting Ancestral Sites and The Blackridge House: A Memoir, and she collaborated with Gary Snyder on Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places, a collection of three decades of their letters and interviews. She and her family live in Cape Town, South Africa.