Walker Brents (b.1959) is a poet and storyteller who has loved folklore and myths since he discovered at the age of five the myths of Hercules and the Greek gods.

"I remember being five years old at my grandparents' house and getting my dad to read to me out of the encyclopedia about the Greek gods," Brents says. "The feeling the myths gave me was mysterious and yet somehow strangely familiar."

After majoring in English and philosophy at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, Brents worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in the early 1980s. It was while working at a refugee center in southern California that he was able to listen to the many stories of Vietnamese, Romanian, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees.

Brents now tells Hindu, Japanese, and Chinese myths and folk tales at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and teaches at Berkwood Hedge School in Berkeley. He has published poetry in a number of literary magazines, including the Berkeley Review of Books, Moksha Journal, and Galley Sail Review. He has been a featured performer at various cafes, as well as at the Marsh, a theater in San Francisco.