John Pryor Fulkerson's love of words began when he was a young boy in New York. He grew up listening to his grandmother recite the works of Rudyard Kipling and William Wordsworth. In college, he exchanged long, entertaining letters with his father, a physician, and also began writing and studying poetry while pursuing pre-medical courses. Inspired by his father and other physicians in his family, John went to Yale Medical School and became an orthopedic surgeon. He continued to write, penning two books on knee surgery and over one hundred chapters and scientific articles. He continued to write poetry and counts Lewis Thomas, Rumi, Billy Collins, Rudyard Kipling, Rainer Rilke, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lao Tzu, and William Wordsworth as writers that influenced him.