Robert Root

EVENTS IN 2010

Bob offered four workshops on place at the Geneva Writers' Conference in Switzerland February 5-7, 2010. The event was sponsored by the Geneva Writers' Group.

At AWP in Denver, April 7-10, Bob will be on the panel "Writing Biographies: Making Someone Else's Story Your Own." The other writers scheduled to be on the panel are Diana Raab, Phillip Lopate, Honor Moore, Joy Castro, and Kim Stafford.

While in Colorado Bob will also speak at the Littleton Historical Museum on April 8 and the Estes Park History Museum on April 17 about his research into Colorado history and his book traveling in the footsteps of Isabella Bird. He will also participate in the Arapaho County Community College Writer's Studio Festival on April 11 and visit classes and read from his writing at Adams State College in Alamosa on April 13. He will give a public reading at the University of Colorado at Boulder Thursday evening, April 15.

Bob is scheduled to teach a workshop on writing alternative nonfiction at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, June 14-18, 2010.

EVENTS IN 2009

In Spring 2009 Bob's Colorado book, Following Isabella: Travels in Colorado Then and Now, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press. In January 2009 Pearson/​Longman published the fifth edition of the anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/​on Creative Nonfiction. The personal essay "Postscript to a Postscript to 'The Ring of Time'" appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of The Pinch.

At the February 2009 AWP Conference in Chicago Bob was part of two panels: "Must the Memoir Read Like a Novel?" with Thomas Larson, Bob Shacochis, Jocelyn Bartkevicius, and Dale Rigby and "Creative in Form, Nonfiction in Content" with Michael Steinberg, Ned Stuckey-French, and Marcia Aldrich.

The Summer Residency for the Ashland University low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing ran from July 25-August 8. Bob read from new writing, presented a craft seminar,"Shaping Language in Nonfiction and Poetry," with Kathryn Winograd, and mentored writers in two workshops.

At the 2009 Kachemak Bay Writers Conference in Homer, Alaska, June 12-16. Bob presented workshops and a reading, served as a panelist on two panels, and consulted with individual writers on their manuscripts.

Interviews with Bob about Following Isabella broadcast on "Colorado Matters" on KCFR-FM in Denver and on "Write On Four Corners" on KSJE-FM are available in their online archives (www.cpr.org and www.ksje.com).

Bob taught a workshop on the alternative essay and memoir at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 12. He visited the University of Memphis on October 1 to speak to MFA students and to read from and talk about his nonfiction writing.

EVENTS IN 2008

In 2008, Bob presented at a session on how creative writers can effectively teach composition at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in New York City, February 2. His fellow panelists included Michael Steinberg, Sarah Dickerson, and, filling in for Lad Tobin, Anne-Marie Oomen.

In February Bob led a workshop on writing for Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. The workshop, taking place on Saturday, February 23, titled "Writing Nonlinear Prose," helped nonfictionists and fictionists alike work with segmented and experimental forms.

During Lighthouse Writers Literary Festival in June Bob offered two evening workshops, one on writing segmented prose on June 11 and the other on revising prose on June 16. Bob also read two pieces on fog at the Lighthouse Faculty Reading on Saturday, June 7, an event at the Mercury Cafe.

On two consecutive weekends, from 1-4 each Saturday and Sunday, Bob also taught a class entitled "Making Memoir," focused on helping writers start, progress, or complete memoirs.

As a faculty member at the MFA Program at Ashland University, Bob ran a workshop, presented a craft seminar with poets Kathryn Winograd and Angie Estes on "The Lyric Mode in Poetry and Nonfiction," and read from published and unpublished writing at the Summer Residency, July 13-26 in Ashland, Ohio.

Bob's essay "Terra Cognita" was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Colorado Review. His conference paper, "Locating the Nonfiction of Place," was published in Region, Nation, Frontiers: Proceedings from the 11th International Region and Nation Literature Association Conference, published by Cambridge Scholars Press.

Throughout the early months of 2008 Bob contributed articles on the history of the Colorado Authors' League to the CAL website at www.coloradoauthors.org. Articles include a reprint of a news article on the founding of CAL, articles on Arthur Carhart and Mary Coyle Chase, and a posting of poetry winners of the CAL Top Hand and Writing Awards.

EVENTS IN 2007

On Wednesday, February 28, 2007, at Four Mile House Historical Park in Denver, Bob read from Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale at an event sponsored by Colorado Pregnancy and Newborn Loss Services. He also signed copies of the book and copies of "A Guide to Editing and Publishing Family Manuscripts."

On March 24, 2007, Bob was a panelist at the Conference on College Composition and Communication at the Hilton in New York City. He spoke about "The Nonfiction Motive." At the same conference, during the Special Interest Group in Creative Nonfiction meeting, he received the 2006 Donald Murray Prize for his essay "A Double Life."

For the first public reading and signing of the anthology Landscapes With Figures: The Nonfiction of Place Bob spoke at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver's LoDo as part of the Rocky Mountain Land Series on Saturday, March 31, 2007.

Bob participated in the Author's Open House at the Englewood (Colorado) Public Library on April 15, 2007 1-3 p.m. where he signed copies of Landscapes With Figures.

During the meeting of ASLE, the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment, June 12-16, 2007, Bob and two other essayists, Elizabeth Dodd and Lisa Knopp, read from their work on a panel titled "Going Coastal." Bob's reading excerpted a new essay, "The Coast of Acadia." The event was at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Also in June Bob spoke about writing nonfiction during the Lighthouse Writers Literary Festival in Denver. He presented "The Art of Seeing in Nonfiction" on June 12 and "The Nonfiction of Place" on June 21.

In connection with the Lighthouse Writers Literary Festival Bob read from his creative nonfiction, a section of Recovering Ruth, as part of a faculty reading event on Tuesday, June 12, at Nine10 Arts in Denver.

On September 20th Bob read from and discussed Landscapes With Figures at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York. While there he visited writing classes and spoke to students in an Adirondack field study program in the mountains.

In October Bob spoke at the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, CO, on Tuesday the 16th on the nonfiction of place, as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Denver.

A few days later Bob was among the presenters at the Author Fest of the Rockies event in Manitou Springs, CO, and gave a workshop on prose style on Saturday, October 20. He also read part of "Anasazi" at a Friday night poetry (and prose) reading.

At the biannual University of Iowa NonfictioNow Conference in Iowa City, November 1-3, 2007, Bob spoke on the sources and motives in writing for a panel titled "Composition=Creative Nonfiction." Other panelists included Michael Steinberg, Lad Tobin, and Mimi Schwartz. He was also a participant in a tribute to nonfiction guru Carl Klaus.

On November 28 Rowman & Littlefield published his newest book, The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction. Bill Milligan's review of the book appears in the Winter 2008 issue of Brevity, online at http:/​/​www.creativenonfiction.org/​brevity/​index.htm.

EVENTS IN 2006:

Bob Root spoke on “Locating the Nonfiction of Place” at the Eleventh International Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation” at Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, on Sunday, July 30, at 1:00 p.m. in the KSU Union.

While serving as an Artist-in-Residence from August 27 to September 15 at Acadia National Park in Maine, Bob spoke to sixth grade students at the Schoodic Education and Research Center on the evening of September 14 and gave a public reading from his writing on September 15.

Bob has also agreed to serve as editor of a new feature, "Tales from the Trails," that will appear on the Colorado Mountain Club website and occasionally in the print publication, Trail & Timberline Quarterly. "Tales from the Trails" will published short (750-850 words) nonfiction accounts of hiking, climbing, trekking, snowshoeing and skiing submitted by members of the Colorado Mountain Club.

Bob talked about the writing of historical nonfiction at the Box Factory for the Arts in St. Joseph, Michigan, on Saturday November 4, 2006. His morning keynote was titled "The Past Is Another Country: Notes on Time Travel in History and Nonfiction." He also worked with writers in the Writer's Studio in the afternoon.

While in Michigan Bob talked to students in nonfiction and literary studies classes in the English Department at Central Michigan University and spoke on "The Nonfiction of Place" on the evening of November 7.