J. Michael Yates

Who is J. Michael Yates?

J. Michael Yates is a Canadian poet and dramatist.

Yates was born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and did graduate degrees at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan and received an honorary doctorate from Ohio University. He is a widely published author of poetry, fiction, drama, translations, and philosophical essays. He has edited several anthologies and founded and edited several literary magazines. His work has been translated into most of the western languages and several of the eastern ones and his drama for radio, television, and stage have been produced both nationally and internationally. His last rank as a university professor was Distinguished Professor.

He has won many literary prizes including the Major Hopwood Awards and the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts and Sciences from University of Missouri, The Look of Books, The Olympic Arts Award for Schedules of Silence.

He has also been a logger, a powder monkey, a motorcycle racer, a broadcasting executive, a broadcaster, an advertising executive, a print salesman, a commercial photographer, a publisher. He retired after seventeen years as a Maximum Security Prison Guard and SWAT team member. Now, he and his wife teach languages, history of ideas, and science in their home in Vancouver, B.C. Yates lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.