“BEEP is a wonder, both monkey and novel, our hero’s curious, questing soul, the ebullient brilliance of Roorbach’s prose. Wildly beautiful, funny, moving, entrancing, and hopeful, this is a story for our times, a ray of warm and generous light, a stern warning, a triumph of storytelling.” —Kate Christensen, author of Welcome Home, Stranger
“With a lexicon worthy of Anthony Burgess, our small but mighty hero is quick to recognize the perils facing our fragile world. But Beep is a love story most of all, told with the poetry of a pure heart.” —Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Dog of the North
“… fans of Roorbach’s prolific work will appreciate his signature lyricism and sense of place, his sweeping narrative, humor and romance. New readers are walking into the hands of a skilled storyteller who’s not afraid to take on a big, messy tale of love, privilege and abuse.” —New York Times Book Review
“Bill Roorbach knows so well how to break your heart, how to make you fall in love, how to see you well through both and feel so much the greater human being for it all. What a wonderful writer, what a beautiful book.” —Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane
Editors’ Pick for Amazon’s Best of 2012 list
Shelf Awareness Top Ten Best Fiction of 2012
Columbus Dispatch’s Top Books of 2012
Maine Literary Award for Fiction, 2013
“A bravura performance. It’s been a long time since a writer’s written so brilliantly about subjects as varied as pro football, dance, food, and murder in the same book. My God, it was fun.” ―Richard Russo, author of Nobody’s Fool
“A bighearted, big-boned story … Life Among Giants reads like something written by a kinder, gentler John Irving … Roorbach is a humane and entertaining storyteller with a smooth, graceful style.” ―The Washington Post
Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction, 2005
“There is poetry in Bill Roorbach’s prose … his lyricism touched lightly with irony.” ―Boston Globe
“Bill Roorbach is a brilliant guide to the natural world. Gracefully combining deep knowledge, lyrical description and wry humor, his writing draws you out of your chair and into a world of streams and meadows and trees and bugs and beavers. And it makes you want to stay there.” ―The Seattle Times
“In these vigorous, boisterous, and earthy essays, Bill Roorbach gives us a shrewdly candid self-portrait, while telling us reams about what it means to be a man. He writes confidently and confidingly, elegantly, and articulately.” ―Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell
Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, 2000
O. Henry Award, 2000
“Immensely appealing … Roorbach’s tender, affecting stories will leave you feeling as if you’ve come to understand your own missteps and misjudgments slightly better, and to forgive yourself a little more.” —Newsday
“Roorbach is as raw and engaged a writer as you’ll ever read … He rivals James Baldwin in his ability to miraculously open up rivers of male sentiment.” —Los Angeles Weekly
“Roorbach is equally at home among the ski bums of the present day and the hippie bums of a previous era, especially those who wanted to “Stop the War” by starting their own. This is a piercing novel, one that perfectly captures the seismic upheaval of the end of the ’60s.” —Publishers Weekly
“This first novel brilliantly and compassionately recalls the turbulence of the Sixties as well as the violent yet idealistic fringes of the antiwar movement.” —Library Journal
“A compelling coming-of-middle-age novel.” —Booklist
“The Smallest Color is better than good, better than terrific, it is, well, wonderful.” —Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once
“Bill Roorbach is a storyteller’s storyteller.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
“Roorbach falls, for me, into that small category of writers whose every book I must read, then reread.” —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me
“Imagine Henry David Thoreau not only young and in love but as a thirtysomething contemporary, and you’ll have the delights of Summers with Juliet. Presented as a novel, the book is actually a highly polished, thoughtful journal of the eight holidays the author spent traveling around the United States and Canada with his bride-to-be, the winsome and strong-willed Juliet.” —Los Angeles Times
“Summers with Juliet … is an understated memoir of underfunded adventures from Martha’s Vineyard to Montana. It’s also a beguiling meditation on love, nature and the difficulty of growing up … Ultimately, in the best Transcendentalist tradition, Roorbach finds nature all around him, helping him conquer fears of mortality, gain faith in the future and, on a soggy June day in New Hampshire, marry his Juliet.” —Boston Globe
“Writing Life Stories is an inspiring way to begin writing a memoir. Roorbach is a fine author whose enthusiasm is infectious.” —Lee Gutkind, The Art of Creative Nonfiction, founding editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine
“Writing Life Stories is brimming with valuable suggestions, evocative assignments, insights into the writing process, and shrewd common sense. I can’t wait to try some of his ideas in the classroom and on myself. This writing guide delivers the goods.” —Phillip Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay
“From the composition classroom to the biology lab–any teacher who makes writing a key component of the learning process will find this new anthology a creative and thought-provoking resource. Using the diaries, memoirs, science essays, travel writings, and literary journalism of some of America’s most gifted writers, Bill Roorbach brings creative nonfiction across disciplinary boundaries and into the classroom.” —Dana Sobyra, The Chronicle of Higher Education
“This text is one of the best, if not the best, that I have encountered in thirty years of teaching. It introduced me to at least a dozen wonderful writers and re-introduced me to many more I’d lost track of. The selections are consistently excellent.” —Rick Case, Maui Community College
“An important contribution to an emerging field.” —Adebayo Williams, Savannah College of Art and Design
“A superior collection of the various forms of creative nonfiction.” —Albert DiBartolomeo, Drexel University
“An unbelievably comprehensive resource for instructors and students alike. The organization by genre and the clarity of the sample readings anthologized in each section both introduces readers to the diverse possibilities of creative nonfiction and leaves them with a heightened appreciation for the power of the prose of ‘truth’ writing.” —Heather Fester, Bowling Green State University