Rick Bass

Rick Bass in 2015

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 Story Prize for books published in 2016 for his collection of new and selected stories, For a Little While. He 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

• The Watch: Stories. W. W. Norton & Company. 1994. ISBN 978-0-393-31135-8. (Originally published 1989)
• Platte River. University of Nebraska Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-8032-5973-7.
• In the Loyal Mountains. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1995. ISBN 0-395-71687-X.
• The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1997. ISBN 0-395-71758-2.
• Fiber. University of Georgia Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8203-2063-2.
• Where the Sea Used to Be. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1999. ISBN 978-0-395-95781-3. (Originally published 1998)
• The Hermit's Story. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2003. ISBN 978-0-618-38044-2. (Originally published 2002)
• The Diezmo. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2005. ISBN 0-395-92617-3.
• The Lives of Rocks: Stories. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2006. ISBN 978-0-618-59674-4.
• Nashville Chrome: A Novel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2010. ISBN 978-0-547-31726-7.
• All the Land to Hold Us. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2013. ISBN 978-0-547-68712-4.

For a Little While: New and Selected Stories. Little Brown. 2016. ISBN 978-0-316-38115-4

Nonfiction

• The Deer Pasture. W. W. Norton & Company. 1996. ISBN 978-0-393-31435-9. (Originally published 1985)
• Wild to the Heart. W. W. Norton & Company. 1997. ISBN 978-0-393-31487-8. (Originally published 1987)
• Oil Notes. Flamingo. 1990. ISBN 978-0-87074-383-2.
• Winter: Notes from Montana. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1991. ISBN 978-0-395-61150-0.
• The Ninemile Wolves. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2003. ISBN 978-0-618-26302-8. (Originally published 1992)
• The Lost Grizzlies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1997. ISBN 978-0-395-85700-7. (Originally published 1995)
• The Book of Yaak. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1997. ISBN 978-0-395-87746-3. (Originally published 1996)
• The New Wolves: The Return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest. Globe Pequot. 2007. ISBN 978-1-59921-228-9. (Originally published 1998)
• Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism. Milkweed Editions. 1999. ISBN 978-1-57131-224-2.
• Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2000. ISBN 978-0-395-92618-5. (Originally published 2000)
• Why I Came West: A Memoir. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2008. ISBN 978-0-618-59675-1.
• The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009. ISBN 978-0-547-05516-9.
• Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Caribou Herd, Gwitch-'in Culture and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sierra Club Books. 2004. ISBN 1-57805-114-2.
• The Black Rhinos of Namibia: Searching for Survivors in the African Desert. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2012. ISBN 0-54705-521-8.

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

Archival Materials

• Author papers at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University
• Rick Bass papers, MSS 8192 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University

Essays

• 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

Other Pages

• Official website
• Lopate Show with The Story Prize finalists: Rick Bass, Mary Gordon, and George Saunders (2/27/07)