Jean Giono (author), widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was born in 1895 in Manosque, France, where he lived almost his entire life. He considered himself to be both Italian and French. Manosque, in Provence, was the setting for almost all of Giono's novels and other works. The son of a cobbler, he grew up in a tenement, where his mother took in washing. In 1911, at the age of sixteen, he left school to become the sole provider for his family. He was a soldier in the First World War. In 1929, at the age of thirty-four, his first two novels, Colline (Hill of Destiny) and Un de Baumugnes (Lovers Are Never Losers), were published. He would go on to publish more than fifty novels, poems, essays and plays. Giono was briefly jailed in 1939 for pacifist activities. He died in 1970 of heart failure. Giono often spoke of the obligation writers have to spread hope and awareness of the magical effects of nature. A poet's mission, he said, is to remind us of the beauty and the sense of freedom that can be found in the mountains, hills and meadows. These themes were central to his best-known work, The Man Who Planted Trees. He worked on this short story off and on for twenty-three years and wrote a number of different endings. In 1953, when his American editor asked him for a piece about an unforgettable character, he submitted the story with its original title of The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness. His publisher rejected the story when it was discovered that the central character of the story, Elzeard Bouffier, was fictional. Giono then donated the story to the public domain, and Vogue magazine published it. Before he died, Giono said toan interviewer, "It is one of my stories of which I am the proudest. It does not bring me in one single penny, and that is why it has accomplished what it was written for."
Artist Roderick MacIver (Illustrator) founded Heron Dance in 1995 to celebrate the seeker's journey and the spirit and beauty of all that is wild. His words and his watercolors are inspired by a love of wild places and the peace and rhythm he finds there.