Rick Bass

Rick Bass (born March 7, 1958) is an American writer and an environmental activist.

Life

Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, the son of a geologist, and he studied petroleum geology at Utah State University. He grew up in Houston, and started writing short stories on his lunch breaks while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to the remote Yaak Valley, where he works to protect his adopted home from roads and logging. Rick serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies. He continues to give readings, write, and teach around the country and world.

His papers are held at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University and Texas State University–San Marcos.

Awards

Bass won the 1995 James Jones Literary Society First Novel Fellowship for his novel in progress, Where the Sea Used to Be. He was a finalist for the Story Prize in 2006 for his short story collection The Lives of Rocks. He was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award (autobiography) for Why I Came West (2009). He was also awarded the General Electric Younger Writers Award, a PEN/Nelson Algren Award Special Citation for fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Works

Fiction

• (Originally published 1989)
• (Originally published 1998)
• (Originally published 2002)

Nonfiction

• (Originally published 1985)
• (Originally published 1987)
• (Originally published 1992)
• (Originally published 1995)
• (Originally published 1996)
• (Originally published 1998)
• (Originally published 2000)

Anthologies

• Pushcart Prize
• O. Henry Award.
• Best American Short Stories 1991
• Best American Short Stories 1996
• Best American Short Stories 2001.
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013

About Rick Bass, non-fiction by others

• The Literary Art and Activism of Rick Bass, edited by O. Alan Weltzein, (2001). ISBN 978-0-87480-697-7

External links

• Official website
• Author papers at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University
• Lopate Show with The Story Prize finalists: Rick Bass, Mary Gordon, and George Saunders (2/27/07)
• Danger Nonfiction in Narrative Magazine
• "Rick Bass", On Point, July 2, 2009
• "Rick Bass", Charlie Rose, August 10, 1998
• "Rick Bass", "Love of a Place", Outside Bozeman magazine
• "Fiber", Mississippi Review, September 1997
• "Paradise Lost", Orion Magazine, January/February 2005