The Merwin Conservancy Presents Bill Porter on Maui, Feb. 10

Bill Porter (aka Red Pine). PC: Maui Arts and Cultural Center.

The Merwin Conservancy presents Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) in the Green Room on Friday, Feb. 10, 2017 in the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, starting at 7 p.m.

Porter is a travel writer and renowned translator of Chinese literature, poetry, and sacred Buddhist and Taoist texts. He will appear with an inspiring presentation entitled, “The Search for Solitude: China’s Hermit Tradition,” based on his book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, which has become a best-seller in China, where it has sold a quarter of a million copies in its Chinese translation.

Porterʻs translation work is done exclusively under the name Red Pine, while his travel writing is done under his given name, Bill Porter. Porterʻs life as a translator began in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan in the 1970s, when a monk handed him a book of poetry by Han-Shan (Cold Mountain). Discovering there a profound “world that has no words,” Porter went on to become a revered translator of dozens of important texts, including Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, and The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse.

Over a career spanning three decades, he has translated many classical Chinese poets and important works of Taoist and Buddhist literature. Informed by his own Buddhist practice and travels throughout Asia, Red Pineʻs work distinctively carries a generosity of spirit that opens up these challenging texts to the English-speaking world. He has been the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, WESTAF Award in Translation, Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, and a Guggenheim Literary Fellowship.

The presentation will be followed by an intimate Q&A with the audience and book signing at a courtyard reception with dessert, champagne, book fair, and live musical entertainment.

This event is presented by FIM Group. All ticket sales benefit Maui the nonprofit Merwin Conservancy. Tickets are $25; $10 for students with a valid ID (plus applicable fees).