His parents both from Maine, Richard Taylor grew up in rural New Hampshire. His education came from Dartmouth, the University of Kiel (Fulbright Fellowship) and Yale. He has been a teacher of German language and literature in colleges, Latin and English as well at private secondary schools. A member of the 1964 Olympic Nordic Ski Team and for many years a staff coach with the National Team, he has been variously a construction worker, ski touring center designer and operator, a translator, and for twenty years (through 2007) a teacher of German, Latin, and English and a running and cross-country ski coach at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine. He and his wife Sally still live in Bethel. His first book, The Absence of Strangers, was published by Goose River Press in 2017.