 Barnstone's daughter and son are also poets, translators, and scholars Aliki Barnstone and Tony Barnstone.Willis Barnstone's first teaching position was instructor in English and French at the Anavryta Classical Lyceum in Greece, 1949–50, a private school in the forest of Anavryta north of Athens, attended by prince Constantine, the later ill-fated king of Greece, who was then nine years old.In 1951 he worked as a translator of French art texts for Les Éditions Skira in Geneva, Switzerland.