J. Michael Yates was born in Fulton, Missouri on April 10, 1938. After studies at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan, he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Having taught in Ohio and Alaska, Yates arrived in Canada in July of 1966 and remained on the staff of the Creative Writing Department at UBC from 1966 to 1971, meeting Charles Lillard there in the fall of 1967. He participated in the founding of "Contemporary Literature in Translation" with Andreas Schroeder in 1968 and co-edited Volvox: Poetry from the Unofficial Languages of Canada (with Charles Lillard) in 1971. Partly influenced by Lillard, who was born in Alaska, Yates became one of the first of numerous urban writers to try living on the Queen Charlotte Islands, moving there in 1971 to operate Sono Nis Press, a literary press for which he provided the name. Yates has also pursued other interests in advertising, broadcasting, photography, computer programming and correctional services, to name a few.