Poet, translator, and author, William J. Higginson gave the keynote addresses at the first Haiku North America conference in San Francisco in 1991 and at the 10th Anniversary of Haiku North America conference in Boston in 2001. Also in 2001, he was named a Toshiba Fellow of the Japanese Text Initiative at the University of Virginia. He has spoken on haiku, poetry, and translation--with an emphasis on East Asian poetries--at venues from Toronto to Tokyo, New York to Matsuyama. Raised in New York City and nearby New Jersey and Connecticut, he has also lived in Massachusetts, Texas, and Japan. For the last several years he has continued his writing and speaking career from Santa Fe, New Mexico. His many books include The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku--"the standard text on the subject" according to Booklist. After a decade of study, he published the companion volumes The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World and Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, giving an overview of a millennium of Japanese poetry and collecting over 1000 poems by 600 poets from 50 countries, respectively. Working as a poet-in-residence in elementary and secondary schools since the early 1970's, Higginson has also written and spoken extensively on teaching writing.