| Name | Bill Gillard |
| Campus |
UW—Fox Valley |
| Home Location | Appleton, Wisconsin. My wife, two daughters and I made the big move (mid)west in 2006. We escaped the crowds, pollution, noise, and high cost of living to find ourselves in a place that reminds us not at all of our old New Jersey home. But Garrison Keillor prepared us for the Midwest, so we're doing all right so far. |
| Primary Research Area | I do a lot of creative writing. My poems and stories have briefly surfaced in stupefyingly obscure magazines all over North America. My most recent academic publication appears in Writer's Chronicle and looks at successful short story openings. I have also published on science fiction, World War I soldier poetry, zombie movies, and Native American literature. |
| Reading for Pleasure | Everything I read is for pleasure--I feel lucky to have a job where I get paid to read and talk about the best stuff ever written. Outside of reading for class, lately I've been absorbed in what might be a new genre of writing, so new it doesn't have a name, as far as I know. Soon I Will Be Invincible (Austin Grossman), The Fortress of Solitude (Jonathan Lethem), From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (Minister Faust), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Michael Chabon), and Falling Boy (Alison McGhee) are comic books, more or less, but without illustration, graphic novels that are all novel and not graphic, if that's possible. Still not sure what it all means, but I'm working on it... |
| Me as a Person | My family and I love the coast of Maine and spend every moment we can at Pemaquid Point, the lighthouse depicted on the Maine quarter. I play hockey in an old man league on the weekends. It's never a pretty sight, but if you're in Oconomowoc on a Saturday night, come on out! Less bruisingly, I design board games and have hopes of one day getting a couple of them to market. In my younger days, I played a lot of music, wrote a bunch of songs. Some of them didn't even sound like Springsteen, although being from New Jersey, I have a genetic predisposition to make songs about old cars and desperation. |
| Summer 2007 | |
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| A family picture in New Harbor, Maine |
Kayaking
on the Pemaquid River, again, in Maine, with my daughters Gwen (3) and Imogen (8) |
