Bill Barich

Last updated

Bill Barich (born 1943 in Winona, Minnesota) is an American writer.

Contents

Early life and education

He grew up on Long Island and graduated from Colgate University in 1965. Subsequently, he served in the U.S. Peace Corps in eastern Nigeria (Biafra), then settled in northern California where many of his books are set.

Career

He published Laughing in the Hills, his first book, a classic account of racetrack life, in 1980. William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker , ran a two-part excerpt from the book and appointed Barich a staff writer. His contributions over the next fifteen years fall into three categories: travel and the sporting life; reportage; and short fiction. Traveling Light, his account of a sojourn abroad in Italy and England, appeared in 1984, after which he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. [1] His other books include Hard to Be Good (stories); Big Dreams: Into the Heart of California (travel); Carson Valley (novel); Crazy for Rivers (angling/autobiography); and A Fine Place to Daydream (travel/racing). Barich's work has been included in Best American Short Stories and many other anthologies.

In addition to The New Yorker, he has contributed to Esquire , Sports Illustrated , American Poetry Review , Salon , Narrative, and other magazines and journals, and he is a Literary Laureate of the San Francisco Public Library. He travels between Santa Monica, California and Dublin, Ireland. He has also written a book entitled A Pint of Plain, an account of his setting out to find a traditional authentic Irish pub. It is a lament of sorts as he is seeking the famous Pat Cohan-type pub of the John Wayne film "The Quiet Man." In 2010, Barich published Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America his account of a 5,943-mile cross-country trip undertaken in the autumn of 2008 just prior to the presidential election. He assesses the state of the nation in much the same way John Steinbeck did almost fifty years ago in Travels With Charley. From 2010 through 2012 he worked as the lead writer on the HBO series Luck, about horses and racing, created by David Milch and starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. In 2016, Barich published An Angle on the World, a collection of reporting from The New Yorker, travel pieces, personal essays, and book reviews.

Related Research Articles

John Steinbeck American writer

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters," and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.

<i>The Grapes of Wrath</i> 1939 American realist novel by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Jeffrey Eugenides Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of a feature film, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.

T. C. Boyle

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle, also known as T. C. Boyle and T. Coraghessan Boyle, is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

<i>Travels with Charley</i>

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a 1960 road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck, in the company of his standard poodle Charley. Steinbeck wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level because he made his living writing about it. He wrote of having many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today?" However, he found that he had concerns about much of the "new America" he witnessed.

The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.

Richard Tillinghast is a poet and author.

Wright Morris

Wright Marion Morris was an American novelist, photographer, and essayist. He is known for his portrayals of the people and artifacts of the Great Plains in words and pictures, as well as for experimenting with narrative forms.

Thomas Myles Steinbeck was a screenwriter, photographer, and journalist. He published numerous works of fiction, including short stories and novels. He was the elder son of American novelist John Steinbeck.

Gordon Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of the novelist Atticus Lish.

William Finnegan is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of works of international journalism. He has specially addressed issues of racism and conflict in Southern Africa and politics in Mexico and South America, as well as poverty among youth in the United States, and is well known for his writing on surfing.

Ben Lerner American writer

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Howard Foundation Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a MacArthur Fellow, among other honors. In 2011 he won the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie", the first American to receive the honor. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

Jennifer Egan Novelist, short story writer

Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short story writer. Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. As of February 28, 2018, she is the President of the PEN America Center. Egan lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.

Daniel Alarcón

Daniel Alarcón is a novelist, journalist and radio producer. He is co-founder, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante, an award-winning Spanish language podcast distributed by NPR. Currently, he is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Columbia University Journalism School and writes about Latin America for The New Yorker.

Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.

Lawrence Clark Powell

Lawrence Clark Powell was a librarian, literary critic, bibliographer and author of more than 100 books. Powell "made a significant contribution to the literature of the library profession, but he also writes for the book-minded public. His interests are reflected in the subjects that recur throughout his writings; these are history and travel, especially concerning the American Southwest, rare books, libraries and librarianship, the book trade, and book collecting."

Tony DSouza

Tony D'Souza is an American novelist, journalist, essayist, reviewer, travel, and short story writer. He has published three novels with the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt including: Whiteman (2006), The Konkans (2008), and Mule (2011).

Dagoberto Gilb

Dagoberto Gilb is an American writer who writes extensively about the American Southwest.

Robert DeMott is an American author, scholar, and editor best known for his influential scholarship on writer John Steinbeck, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Salvatore Scibona is an American novelist and short-story writer. He has won awards for both his novels and short stories, and was selected in 2010 as one of The New Yorker "Fiction Writers to Watch: 20 under 40".

References

  1. "1984 U.S. and Canadian Fellows". Guggenheim Foundation. Archived from the original on 2007-07-31. Retrieved 2007-08-15.