Born in Warner Robbins, Georgia, to an Air Force family, swinging in a hammock on a ship to Guam and Japan by the age of three months, William R. Eakin has spent much of his life traveling and living in sometimes exotic places.

At present, though, he lives on a patch of rural Arkansas he and his three children call the "Thicket," where he also teaches at a local university; with degrees in philosophy, he has spent decades teaching humanities, philosophy, art history, German, and assorted wildly diverse college courses. He has also served as editor for a book series on the world religions and ecology for Orbis books.

Biography provided by the author, January 2002