Bill Roorbach’s next book is BEEP, about a monkey who saves the world! Coming July 16, 2024 from Algonquin. Also from Algonquin are the critically acclaimed novel Lucky Turtle (2022), a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and winner of a Montana Book Award; The Girl of the Lake: Stories (2017), longlisted for the Story Prize; Kirkus Prize fiction shortlist finalist The Remedy for Love (2015); and the bestselling novel Life Among Giants (2012), which won the  Maine Literary Award in fiction and was optioned and developed for an HBO series, though never aired. Nonfiction includes a tryptic of memoirs in nature: Temple Stream (Dial Press/Random House 2005, Downeast Books 2016), which won the Maine Literary Award in nonfiction; Into Woods, (Notre Dame 2002, Downeast Books 2018) which was excerpted as a cover story in Harper’s Magazine; and Summers with Juliet (Houghton Mifflin 1992), Bill’s first book and a classic of nature writing, excerpted internationally in Granta #33. His first novel, The Smallest Color (2001), stars an Olympic ski coach and troubled son of the 60s, and sold out its only printing. Big Bend: Stories (2000) won the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the title story, featured in The Atlantic Monthly, won an O. Henry Prize that same year and was featured on the NPR program Selected Shorts, as read by actor James Cromwell live at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Books of instruction include Writing Life Stories (1998 Story Press and 2018 Penguin RandomHouse), and The Art of Truth: Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (Oxford University Press, 2000). Both are used in writing programs around the country to this day. Remarkably, all but one of Bill’s books are still in print and available wherever you like to buy books, preferably your local independent bookstore. Or find them in your town or school library. Bill lives with his family in Scarborough and Farmington, Maine.

Did you know?

Did you know? Bill Roorbach was a judge on the Food Network program Last Cake Standing, but only once, and long ago.

Did you know? Bill is a fellow of the Civatella Rainieri Foundation and spent a two-month residency in their medieval castle in Umbertide, Umbria, in 2018.

Did you know? Bill’s wife, Juliet Karelsen, is a visual artist—check out her website, JulietKarelsen.com. Their daughter, Elysia Roorbach, is an actor newly graduated from NYU Tisch Drama in NYC and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

five-year-old Bill at his desk

Did you know? Bill was a college professor for 25 years. His last full-time stint in Academia was at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he held the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters for a five-year term ending in 2009. He commuted there from Maine!

Did you know? Bill asked Santa for a desk for Christmas when he was five, in 1958. When Santa asked why a desk, Bill answered (in earshot of his mother, who was startled): “I want to be a writer.”

Did you know? Bill now teaches in the low-residency Newport MFA in Creative Writing program at Salve University, Newport, Rhode Island.

Did you know? Bill has had short work in The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Playboy, The American Scholar, Granta, Ecotone, and many more.

Did you know? Bill was a tenured professor on the graduate faculty of The Ohio State University, and won Ohio Arts Council grants in both nonfiction and criticism while living there, not for long!

Did you know? Bill’s first teaching job was at the University of Maine at Farmington in the early nineties. He maintains ties and a home in that town to this day.