Rick Bass

Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.,[1] 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 the Yaak Valley Forest Council. In 2011 Rick moved from the Yaak area of Montana to Missoula, Montana. He continues to give readings, write, and teach around the country and world. He lives in Montana with his family.

Rick Bass’ fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters (in fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism categories), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, nominations for Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, and a Pen/Nelson Algren Special Citation, which was judged by Robert Penn Warren, and a General Electric Younger Writer’s Award. He has had numerous stories anthologized in Best American Short Stories: The Year’s Best. The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons At Home in Montana (Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt), a book about fathering daughters in the wilderness, has been excerpted in O, The Oprah Magazine. His nonfiction has been anthologized in Best American Spiritual Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, and Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Science Writing. Various of his books have been named New York Times as well as Los Angeles Times Notable Books of the Year, and a New York Times Best Book of the Year. A collection of short fiction, The Hermit’s Story, was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and another collection, The Lives of Rocks, was a finalist for the prestigious Story Prize, as well as a Best Book of the Year by the Rocky Mountain News. His most recent nonfiction book, Why I Came West, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a 2011 Montana Arts Council Artist’s Innovation Award.

His stories, articles and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative, Men’s Journal, Esquire, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Harper’s, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Tin House, Zoetrope, Orion, and numerous other periodicals. He has served as a contributing editor to Audubon, OnEarth, Field & Stream, Big Sky Journal, and Sports Afield, and currently writes a regular column for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, as well as for an online hunting magazine, Contemporary Sportsman.

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This interview was such a delight to do. Rick’s approach to answering questions, first with a subtle deflection but then, after some thought, circling back with a considered answer, provide a deep conversation worthy of listening to more than once. I particularly enjoyed our discussion of teaching versus coaching writers and what makes a writer. I hope you enjoy it too.

You guard what you treasure most…what is most valuable to you…that continuing relationship with the page.

Rick’s books

• The Deer Pasture – Non-fiction – 1985
• Wild to the Heart – Non-fiction – 1987
• Oil Notes – Non-fiction – 1989
• The Watch – Short Stories – 1989
• Winter: Notes from Montana – Non-fiction – 1991
• The Ninemile Wolves – Non-fiction – 1992
• Platte River – Novella – 1994
• The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado – Non-fiction – 1995
• In the Loyal Mountains – Short Stories – 1995
• The Book of Yaak – Non-fiction – 1996
• The Sky, the Stars, and the Wilderness – Short Stories – 1997
• The New Wolves: The Return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest – Non-fiction – 1998
• Where the Sea Used to Be – Novel – 1998
• Fiber – Short Stories – 1998
• Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism – Non-fiction – 1999
• Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had – Non-fiction – 2000
• The Hermit’s Story – Short Stories – 2002
• The Roadless Yaak: Reflections and Observations About One of Our Last Great Wild Places – Anthology – 2002
• Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-in Culture, and the Artic National Wildlife Refuge – Non-fiction – 2004
• Falling From Grace: A Literary Response to the Demise of Paradise – Anthology – 2004
• The Diezmo – Novel – 2005
• The Lives of Rocks – Short Stories – 2006
• Why I Came West – Non-fiction – 2008
• The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana – Non-fiction – 2009
• The Blue Horse – Novella – 2009
• Nashville Chrome – Novel – 2010
• The Heart of the Monster – Novella – 2010
• The Black Rhinos of Namibia – Non-fiction – 2012
• The Heart Beneath the Heart – Non-fiction – 2012
• In My Home There is No More Sorrow: Ten Days in Rwanda – Non-fiction – 2012
• All the Land That Holds Us – Novel – 2013
• For a Little While: New and Selected Stories – Short Stories – 2016
• The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes – Non-fiction – 2018

Other books mentioned in this episode:

• Big Bad Love by Larry Brown (“92 Days” is a novella within this book.)
• Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
• If It Sounds Good, It Is Good: Seeking Subversion, Transcendence, and Solace in America’s Music by Richard Manning
• Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work by Steven Pressfield
• Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos
• Songs Older Than Any Known Singer by John Phillip Santos
• All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
• Winter in the Blood by James Welch

People mentioned in this episode:

• Edward Abbey
• Ann Beattie
• John Berger
• Larry Brown
• Anton Chekhov
• Noah Davis
• Todd Davis
• Chris Dombrowski
• Tom Douglas
• Euripides
• John Evans
• William Faulkner
• Gustave Flaubert
• Richard Ford
• Graham Greene
• Barry Hannah
• Jim Harrison
• Amy Hempel
• Tom Lyon
• Maile Meloy
• Richard Manning
• Thomas McGuane
• Bill McKibben
• Gary Nabhan
• Flannery O’Connor
• Doug Peacock
• Steven Pressfield
• Moyle Rice
• John Phillip Santos
• Ichiro Suzuki
• Ivan Turgenev
• John Updike
• Eudora Welty
• Walt Whitman
• Joy Williams

Other references in this episode:

• 350.org
• Etta’s Restaurant
• Lemuria Books
• Mississippi Sierra Club
• rickbass.net
• Utah State University
• Yaak Valley Forest Council

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