About
I bought my house because of its proximity to a racetrack four months out of the year. I religiously watch videos of the SDAV Hot Rod Series – a sort-of-backwards sprint car series in Australia – the Texas Wing Modified Series and New Zealand Supermodified races. If there is a race within a couple hours’ drive of where I am, regardless of everything else going on in the world, I will go to it. I’m into racing.
For 25 years, I have worked for the Statesman Journal – a newspaper in Salem, Oregon – and am among the dying breed of newspaper reporters. I’m always surprised when something I’ve written appears in another publication like USA Today, the Oregonian or the Eugene Register-Guard, but I suspect that means that the strange stories I find are compelling. I’ve won some awards for writing and reporting and turned others down. What matters to me is finding the next story that needs to be told.
“The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack’s Drive to Integrate Auto Racing,” is my first book. When my father died in 2016, he left his old books, magazines and programs about racing to me. I decided to keep everything that had any mention of Rajo Jack – and Hershel McGriff – and used that as the foundation for my research about the pioneering race car driver. Thousands of hours, thousands of miles and hundreds of hours of interviews later, “The Brown Bullet” was completed.
I’m excited about the release of my newest book “The First Lady of Dirt: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Racing Pioneer Cheryl Glass” coming in February 2024. Cheryl’s life has many interesting layers and I’m grateful to all her family, friends, and fellow drivers to who helped me piece together her story.
When I’m not racing, watching races or working on race cars – or writing my next book about a dead race car driver – you can find me barbecuing (I make amazing pork ribs), watching The Great British Baking Show, reading John Grisham novels or going for walks in parks or through my neighborhood. I love finding an obscure music group – Calexico, Laura Gibson and Traffic to name a few – and obsessing over them.
You can find me on social media at Twitter.com/bpoehler, Instagram.com/bpoehler and Facebook.com/billpoehler for photos of race cars. And you can find me and random race tracks throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Featured Work
The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack's Drive to Integrate Auto Racing
The powers-that-be in 1920s auto racing, namely the American Automobile Association’s Contest Board, barred everyone who wasn’t a white male from the sport. But Dewey Gatson, a black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, drove into the center of “outlaw” auto racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of white drivers. In The Brown Bullet, journalist Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track, showing ultimately how Rajo Jack proved to a generation that a black man could compete with some of the greatest white drivers of his era, winning some of the biggest races of the day.
Other Works
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The First Lady of Dirt: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Racing Pioneer Cheryl Glass
2024
Press and Media Mentions
- Podcast and artcile from KUOW of Seattle.
- A story about The First Lady of Dirt in The Chronicle.
- Review of The First Lady of Dirt on Speed Readers.
- A review of The First Lady of Dirt by The International Motor Racing Research Center.
- An interview with Bill Poehler with Vintage Motorsport.
- A review of The Brown Bullet in Forbes.
- A review of The Brown Bullet in the Portland Tribune.
- A review of The Brown Bullet on Jalopnik.
