Poet and author Gary Snyder is one of 10 recipients nationwide of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund writer's award for 1998. Snyder, a UC Davis English professor, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who writes both poetry and nonfiction. Born in 1930, he is one of the major figures of the Beat generation of the late 1950s. He joined the campus in 1986. The fund's writing awards program, begun in 1990, gives writers time to devote to their work and to connect with their communities. As part of their $105,000 awards, the writers work with nonprofit cultural and educational community organizations to create public programs that foster an exchange of ideas and greater appreciation for contemporary literature, according to fund program guidelines. The participating organizations receive $30,000 for their program-related costs. Snyder says he is working with the North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center in rural, northern Nevada County, establishing a series of authors' readings and talks to take place at the center. "I am working with this wonderful local cultural center. One of our goals is to use the money to invite authors who ordinarily wouldn't come here," Snyder said. Working with the cultural center's director, Snyder has created the first year of a three-year authors' series to begin in May and continue this year through November. Participants will include author Freeman House, poet Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (whom Snyder calls one of grandfathers of West Coast poetry) and Snyder. Among Snyder's books are "Turtle Island," which won a Pulitzer Prize, "No Nature: New and Selected Poems," "Mountains and Rivers Without End," and forthcoming this year, "The Gary Snyder Reader," which will include prose, essays, poetry, journals and letters, including some new material. Snyder's awards and honors over the past few years include Yale University's Bollingen Prize in Poetry, which he won in 1997, and last year's "Buddhism Transmission Award," given by the Japan-based Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation.