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Bill Roorbach Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Bill Roorbach

Bill Roorbach

How to pronounce Bill Roorbach: ROAR-bahk

Bill Roorbach Biography

Bill Roorbach is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Flannery O'Connor Prize and O. Henry Prize winner Big Bend; Into Woods; Temple Stream; and the bestselling Life Among Giants. The 10th anniversary edition of his craft book, Writing Life Stories, is used in writing programs around the world. 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.

Life Among Giants was an Editor's Pick for Amazon's Best 2012, a Shelf Awareness Top Ten Best Fiction for 2012, and a winner of the Maine Literary Award for Fiction.

Bill Roorbach's website

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Interview

Bill Roorbach talks about storytelling, housebuilding, Homer and the necessary art of revisions.

You describe yourself on your Twitter page, as "a good writer with bad habits."
I'm 61-years-old. Nowadays my bad habits are staying up late to write and getting up early to hike. I played rock 'n' roll when I was a young man. I really got used to staying up all night and sleeping all day. And I find, as I put my professor life behind me, that I'm reverting to the rock 'n' roll schedule in some ways. I think it suits me. As I writer, I get to go back and keep playing, to put that missing solo in, and rearrange the notes as I see fit.

I also did a lot of construction work in my youth. When I was younger, I'd feel like, well, if everything goes to hell, I can always go build a house. You know, when you're building, you come back the next day and everything's exactly as you left it – the problems and the triumphs. But with gardening, which I do a lot now, you come back the next week, and everything's changed. I see writing both ways.

Have you ever had a first draft that's very close to what ends up on the printed page?
Certainly parts of everything. There might be a stretch of 10 paragraphs that never get changed. But very often, with my fiction, there's ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Bill Roorbach at BookBrowse
Beep jacket The Girl of the Lake jacket The Remedy for Love jacket Life Among Giants jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Bill Roorbach but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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BookBrowse Book Club

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    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    From the bestselling author of I Was Anastasia comes a historical mystery inspired by 18th-century midwife Martha Ballard, who investigates a shocking murder.

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    Three Days in June
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    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

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    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

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