John Wilson Foster was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, and earned his doctorate in English literature at the University of Oregon while teaching as a part-time instructor.
His teaching and research career was spent at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, of which he is a professor emeritus. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Among his publications are The Achievement of Seamus Heaney (Lilliput Press, 1995); Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History (senior editor, Lilliput Press, 1997); The Titanic Reader (Penguin Putnam, 2000); Pilgrims of the Air: The Passing of the Passenger Pigeons (Notting Hill Editions, 2014; New York Review Books, 2017).
