Ronald Johnson (1935-1998) was born in Ashlad, Kansas. After studying at Columbia University, he began his literary career in New York, through contact with poets like Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. In the fifties it began a long journey that would take him from New York to the Appalachian Mountains and finally to Britain. This route would be the basis for one of its most important titles. The Book of the Green Man Johnson lived much of his life in San Francisco, earning a living as a cook and author of cookbooks. In the nineties he returned to Kansas, where he died.