Bill Mayer was born and raised in Los Angeles. He received his BA and MA from San Francisco State University. Through much of his life, he was a dealer in fine wines, especially German and Austrian. He was an avid photographer, exhibiting his pictures of bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of eastern California at Mythos Gallery in 2011. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. From 1992 to 2019, he published six books of poetry, among them The Deleted Family and Articulate Matter. He was married to the art historian, Jane McKinne-Mayer. He died after a long illness on October 25, 2019. A Distance Apart, his final poems, was written during the last months of his life.
