Bill Roorbach

writer

>>Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour<< Join Dave Gessner and me for a toast to good writing, and just about everything else, including my video memoir, "I Used to Play in Bands." Rated about PG-13

"There is poetry in Bill Roorbach's prose ... his lyricism is touched lightly with irony." --The Boston Globe

"While genuine in his appreciation of nature, Roorbach is the antithesis of the smug and self-absorbed naturalist." --The Believer

"Roorbach is a master of capturing and expressing joy." --Hartford Courant

"I've admired Bill Roorbach's voice for a long time. He's a writer who is full of compassion and warmth for his subjects, and he's funny as hell, too."
--Rick Moody

"Bill Roorbach's writing is notable for its warmth, its sensitivity to women, and its irresistable bad boy charm."
--Joyce Johnson

"Roorbach falls, for me, into that small category of writers whose every book I must read, then reread."
--Jay Parini

"Bill Roorbach is a storyteller's storyteller."
--Antonya Nelson.

"Roorbach has put his finger on a basid element of artistic creation: the desire to join with the things one loves." --Newsday

"Bill Roorbach's stylish writing--with its surprising and generous observations about landscapes, internal and external--makes for great literature."
--Debra Spark

"Here is a narrator who makes you glad to be alive, giddy to be in his presence, grateful to love friends and family and dogs with generosity and abandon, to show tenderness and thus by saved by strangers."
--Melanie Rae Thon

"Roorbach has a knack for tapping into deep undercurrents and bringing them to the surface with the least amount of fanfare or fuss."
--Los Angeles Weekly

"Bill Roorbach has quietly built a stellar reputation."
--Publisher's Weekly

Contact Bill at bill@billroorbach.com

For conference and appearance bookings, private study, interviews, more information, or just to stay hello.

Spring News from Bill Roorbach

Algonquin will publish my new novel, THE HIGH SIDE, spring, 2012.

"... alive, electric, and surprisingly dangerous." --Haley Tanner, The New York Times Book Review, Sunday, February 24, 2013

Check out the new LIFE AMONG GIANTS website

Reviews, Tour Schedule, Deleted Scenes, Book Trailer, Blurbs and Kind Words, Discussion Page, Daily Blog, and more

Available everywhere November 13, 2012

"[LIFE AMONG GIANTS] is a soapy and thrilling indulgence, a tale of opulence, love triangles, and madness, set against a sumptuous landscape of lust and feasts, a sensory abundance..." --Publishers Weekly

Hitting my stride at Fairfield University Bookstore, Fairfield, CT (11/15/12)

BILL ROORBACH is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Flannery O'Connor Prize and O. Henry Prize winner Big Bend (University of Georgia Press, 2001), Into Woods (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), and Temple Stream (Random House, 2005). Life Among Giants, a novel, is due from Algonquin in 2012. The 10th anniversary edition of his craft book, Writing Life Stories (Story Press, 2008), is used in writing programs around the world. Recently, Bill was a judge on Food Network All Star Challenge, evaluating incredible Life Stories cakes made under the gun, so to speak. Bill knows nothing about cake, but he knows a lot about life stories! His work has been published in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, New York, and dozens of other magazines and journals. His story "Big Bend" was featured on NPR's "Selected Shorts," read by actor James Cromwell at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Bill has taught at the University of Maine at Farmington, Colby College, and Ohio State. His last academic position was the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts. He has now retired from academia in order to write full time. A comic video memoir about his tragic music career, "I Used to Play in Bands," and all kinds of other work, including a current blog on writers and writing and just about everything else (with author David Gessner) is online at www.billanddavescocktailhour.com.