Bill Roorbach
BornWilliam Roorbach
(1953-08-08) August 8, 1953
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation
NationalityAmerican
EducationIthaca College (BA)
Columbia University
Notable worksBig Bend
Life Among Giants

William Roorbach (born August 8, 1953) is an American novelist, short story and nature writer, memoirist, journalist, blogger and critic. He has authored fiction and nonfiction works including Big Bend, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction[1] and the O. Henry Prize.[2] Roorbach's memoir in nature, Temple Stream, won the Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction, 2005. His novel, Life Among Giants, won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Fiction.[18] [3] And The Remedy for Love, also a novel, was one of six finalists for the 2014 Kirkus Fiction Prize..[4] His latest book, The Girl of the Lake, is a short story collection published in June 2017.[5] His novel in progress is Lucky Turtle.

Background

Bill Roorbach was born in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. The next year, his family moved to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended kindergarten. In 1959 the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where he attended public schools from first grade on, graduating from New Canaan High School in 1971. In 1976, he was graduated from Ithaca College cum laude with a B.A. in Individual and Interdisciplinary Studies.

During what he has called his "writing apprenticeship," [6] Roorbach traveled and worked a series of different jobs. He played piano and sang in a succession of bands, bartended, worked briefly on a cattle ranch, and worked extensively as a carpenter, plumber, and handyman. In January, 1987, he enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program of the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts, where he was awarded a School of the Arts Fellowship, a Fellowship of Distinction and an English Department teaching assistantship. In addition, he was a fiction editor of "Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose." He was graduated in May 1990.

Roorbach and his wife, painter Juliet Karelsen,[7] have one daughter.

Academic career

Roorbach taught at the University of Maine at Farmington from 1991 to 1995 [8] and subsequently at the Ohio State University from 1995 to 2001, winning tenure in 1998.[8] In 2001, he quit his tenured position and returned with his family to Maine where he taught odd semesters as visiting full professor at Colby College. He wrote full-time until Fall, 2004, when he was awarded the William H.P. Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, a five-year position as full professor.[9] He commuted from Maine to Worcester until April, 2009, when he returned to full-time writing.[10] In the winter of 2019 Roorbach will return to teaching as a faculty member of the Newport MFA in creative writing at Salve Regina College.[11]

Work

Roorbach sold his first book. Summers with Juliet, to Houghton Mifflin shortly after graduating from Columbia.[12] In 1998, he published Writing Life Stories. During the interim, he published short work, both fiction and nonfiction, in a number of magazines and journals, including The New York Times Magazine,[13] The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine,[14] Playboy, The Missouri Review,[15] and Granta, .[16] His first novel, The Smallest Color,[17] a collection of stories, Big Bend, and a collection of essays, Into Woods, written incrementally during the preceding decade, were published in a flurry in 2000 and 2001. Big Bend was featured on the NPR program Selected Shorts, performed by the actor James Cromwell.[18] Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth, a widely adopted anthology, was published in 2002 by Oxford University Press. In 2004, A Place on Water, which Bill wrote with poet Wesley McNair and essayist Robert Kimber was published by Tilbury House, a craft publisher in Maine. In 2005, the Dial Press (RandomHouse) published Bill's book Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey,[19] which was based on Bill's article of the same name in Harper's Magazine and won the Maine Literary Award in 2005. Roorbach's novel, Life Among Giants, won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Fiction.[18] [3] And The Remedy for Love, also a novel, was one of six finalists for the 2014 Kirkus Fiction Prize..[4] His latest book, The Girl of the Lake, is a short story collection published in June 2017.[5] His novel in progress is Lucky Turtle.

Awards

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Smallest Color: A Novel. Counterpoint Press. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58243-252-6. Bill Roorbach. (paperback 2003)
  • Life Among Giants. Algonquin. 2012. ISBN 978-1-61620-076-3.
  • The Remedy for Love. Algonquin. 2014. ISBN 978-1-61620-478-5.

Nonfiction

Short story collections

Short stories

  • "Harbinger Hall" published in The Atlantic, December 2004; also included in The Girl of the Lake[20]
  • Kiva—First appeared under the title "Investigation" in Iron Horse.
  • "The Fall"
  • "Murder Cottage"—Originally published in the short story collection, The Girl of The Lake The Girl of the Lake. Algonquin. 2017. ISBN 978-1-61620-332-0..
  • "Princesa"—First appeared in the Missouri Review.
  • "Broadax, Inc."—First appeared in Ecotone.
  • "The Tragedie of King Lear"—Originally published in the short story collection, The Girl of The Lake The Girl of the Lake. Algonquin. 2017. ISBN 978-1-61620-332-0..
  • "Some Should"
  • "Dung Beetle"
  • "The Girl of the Lake"—First appeared in Ecotone.

Anthologies

Essays

Interviews

References

  1. ↑ "UGA Press-Series: The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction". Archived from the original on 2011-08-11. Retrieved 2016-05-17.
  2. ↑ "Big Bend: Short Stories - Bill Roorbach". Archived from the original on 2013-06-04. Retrieved 2013-04-19.
  3. 1 2 "2013 Maine Literary Award Winners Announced! - Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance". Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. 2013-05-31. Retrieved 2017-08-13.
  4. 1 2 THE REMEDY FOR LOVE by Bill Roorbach | Kirkus Reviews.
  5. 1 2 "The Girl of the Lake". Workman Publishing. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  6. ↑ "On Apprenticeship". Poets & Writers. 30 November 2007. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  7. ↑ "Juliet Brigitte Karelsen, Art Student, Is Wed to William F. Roorbach, Writer". The New York Times. 24 June 1990. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  8. 1 2 "Biography - Bill Roorbach". Archived from the original on 2013-06-04. Retrieved 2013-03-11.
  9. ↑ "Bill Roorbach : Professor and Storyteller Extraordinaire". Vitalitymag.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  10. ↑ Bob Keyes (21 April 2013). "Succeeding as a novelist – in a big way". Pressherald.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  11. ↑ "The Newport MFA in Creative Writing - Affiliated Faculty". Salve Regina University. 5 March 2018. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  12. ↑ "Archives". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  13. ↑ "MOMMY, WHAT'S A CLASSROOM?". The New York Times. 2 March 1997. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  14. ↑ "Roorbach, Bill (Harper's Magazine)". Archived from the original on 2012-06-10. Retrieved 2012-07-29.
  15. ↑ "TMR: Scioto Blues". Archived from the original on 2011-09-11. Retrieved 2012-07-29.
  16. ↑ "Granta 33: What Went Wrong? | Magazine | Granta Magazine". Archived from the original on 2010-09-25. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  17. ↑ "Fiction Book Review: THE SMALLEST COLOR by Bill Roorbach, Author . Counterpoint $25 (336p) ISBN 978-1-58243-152-9". Publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  18. ↑ "In 'Shorts,' the Story's the Star as Actors Play All the Characters - latimes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  19. ↑ "Nonfiction Book Review: Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey by Bill Roorbach, Author . Dial $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-385-33654-3". Publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  20. ↑ "Book Review: "The Girl of the Lake"". magazine.columbia.edu. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
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