J S PorterJ.S. PORTER was born in Belfast in the north of Ireland and educated at McMaster University (MA in English literature) in Hamilton, Ontario. He has been reading, thinking about, speaking about, and writing about Thomas Merton for 40 years. He has mad six contributions to The Merton Seasonal, two to The Merton Annual, and three to The Merton Journal along with articles on Merton in Brick, The Antigonish Review, and other journals. Formerly culture critic for Inretro.ca, he is a columnist for Dialogue Magazine and a frequent contributor to the online journal Hamilton Arts and Letters. His books include The Thomas Merton Poems (Moonstone), an imaginative re-creation of Merton for our time; Spirit Book Word: An Inquiry into Literature and Spirituality (Novalis), with a chapter on Merton; Thomas Merton: Hermit at the Heart of Things (Novalis); and Lightness and Soul: Musings on Eight Jewish Writers (Seraphim Editions), with a chapter on Robert Lax. Porter is acknowledged for his literary contributions in the Canadian Who's Who. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife, Cheryl. www.spiritbookword.net Read More Read Less