Showing results by author "Bill Roorbach" in All Categories

From drawing a map of a remembered neighborhood to signing a form releasing yourself to take risks in your work, Roorbach offers innovative techniques that will trigger ideas for all writers. Writing Life Stories is a classic text that appears on countless creative nonfiction and composition syllabi the world over. This updated 10th anniversary edition gives you the same friendly instruction and stimulating exercises along with updated information on current memoir writing trends, ethics, internet research, and even marketing ideas.

When sixteen-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana after being involved in an armed robbery, she is thrust into a world of mountains and cowboys and prayers and miscreants and people from all walks of life like she’s never seen in suburban Massachusetts. At Camp Challenge, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a camp employee of mysterious origin—an origin of constant speculation—and the chemistry between them is instant, and profound.

They’re calling it the "Storm of the Century", so Eric stops at the market for provisions on his way home from work. But when the unkempt and seemingly unstable young woman in front of him in line comes up short on cash, charity takes hold of his heart - 20 bucks and a ride home is the least he can do under the circumstances. The trouble is, Danielle doesn’t really have a home. She’s squatting in a cabin deep in the woods with no electricity, no heat, and nothing but the nearby river to sustain her.

In this immensely enjoyable novel, it takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more clearly. While intending only to go deeper and higher into the Costa Rican rain forest to find a mate, he instead meets Inga, a kindly and loving American teenager on vacation with her family. Inadvertently, often hilariously, Beep makes his way back to New York with Inga, and with her courageously devoted help—and a bit of inspiration from Greta Thunberg—and with the help of just about every animal on earth, Beep manages to change the destiny of the world.

At seventeen, David "Lizard" Hochmeyer is nearly seven feet tall, a star quarterback, and Princeton-bound. His future seems all but assured until his parents are mysteriously murdered, leaving Lizard and his older sister, Kate, adrift and alone. In a mansion across the pond from their Connecticut home lives the world’s greatest ballerina, Sylphide, and her rock star husband, whose own disasters intersect with Lizard’s - and Kate’s - in the most intimate and surprising ways.

In The Girl of the Lake, Bill Roorbach conjures vivid, complex characters whose layered interior worlds feel at once familiar and extraordinary.