Bruce Holbert

Bruce Alan Holbert (born October 4, 1959) is an American writer. He is the author of a novel, Lonesome Animals (Counterpoint Press), and co-author with his wife, Holly Holbert, of an anthology of celebrities recounting their favorite teachers, Signed, Your Student (Kaplan Press), as well as several short stories in nationally recognized magazines.

Early life/education

Bruce Holbert was born in Ephrata, Washington. His father worked construction and his family resided in a dozen different places before he was school age. Most of his childhood, however, was spent in The Grand Coulee Dam area where his paternal grandparents were the original settlers of the Strahl Canyon area. His maternal grandparents migrated from Wisconsin to take work on the dam in the Thirties.

Holbert graduated from Lake Roosevelt High School in Coulee Dam in the spring of 1978, then attended Eastern Washington University where he graduated with a degree in English/Education in 1983.

In August 1982, Holbert inadvertently shot and killed one of his friends in a gun accident. Charges against Holbert were eventually dropped. Holbert has stated that he remains "numbed by guilt."[1]

He took teaching jobs in Jerome, Idaho and St. John Washington before attending The University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop where he assisted in editing The Iowa Review and earned a Teaching Writing Fellowship.[2] He graduated with an MFA in 1990

Literary life

Holbert returned to teaching and raising his family in 1990 in St. John, John Rogers High School in Spokane and Mount Spokane High School in Mead. He also published stories in The Iowa Review, Other Voices, The Antioch Review, and Crab Creek Review. In May 2010, Holbert and his wife published Signed, Your Student (Kaplan Press) a collection of stories by celebrities and successful Americans recounting significant teachers in their lives.[2]

In May 2012, Holbert’s first novel, Lonesome Animals (Counterpoint Press) appeared. Praised as “audacious” by Kirkus[3] and “the hands of a master storyteller” in a starred review by Publishers Weekly,[4] the book has garnered praise as both a literary Western and crime novel.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/i-killed-my-friend.html
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wordstock Festival 2012: Bruce Holbert (accessed 15 January 2013)
  3. ↑ Kirkus: Lonesome Animals by Bruce Holbert (accessed 15 January 2013)
  4. ↑ Publishers Weekly: Lonesome Animals (accessed 15 January 2013)

External links