About
Bill Schubart has lived with his family in Vermont since 1947. Educated locally and at Exeter, Kenyon, and the University of Vermont. He is fluent in French language and culture, which he taught before entering communications as an entrepreneur. He co-founded Philo Records and is the author of the highly successful Lamoille Stories (2008), a collection of Vermont tales. His bibliography includes three short story collections and four novels. He has served on many boards and currently chairs the Vermont College of Fine Arts, known for its writing programs. He speaks extensively on the media and the arts, and writes about Vermont in fiction, humor, and opinion pieces. He is also a regular public radio commentator and blogger. He is the great, great nephew of the renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz and lives in Vermont, with his wife Katherine, also a writer.
Bibliography:
The Lamoille Stories: Uncle Benoit’s Wake (short stories)
Fat People (short stories)
Panhead: A Journey Home (novel)
I am Baybie: Based on the true Story of the Rev. Baybie Hoover and her friend Virginia Brown (novel)
http://www.IAmBaybie.com offers readers a gallery of images of the two women and a live sampling of songs they sang on the street.
Photographic Memory (novel)
The Lamoille Stories II
Lila & Theron (novel)
Featured Work
Lila & Theron
Lila & Theron plumbs the depth and triumph of the human spirit immediately immersing us in a world where neighbors and nature are the gifts and love comes with great hardship. Set in rural America and spanning much of the 20th century, Lila & Theron captures the spirit of the American experience.
‘Thelma dies at nineteen giving birth to a son, Theron. When the son first meets his father, he learns his mother’s death is his fault and can only muster the question, “How did she die?”
Looking away, the father mutters, “She died givin’ birth ta you. An’ I lost all her help and comforts.”
Other Works
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The Correctional Facility
2021
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The Priest
2018
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Photographic Memory
2014
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The Lamoille Stories II
2014
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I Am Baybie
2013
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Panhead
2012
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Fat People
2010
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The Lamoille Stories
2008
Awards and Recognition
- IBPA Benjamin Franklin 2d Place for Popular Fiction 2017
- Independent Book Publishers Ass. (IBPA) Popular Fiction Finalist for Lila & Theron 2017
- Independent Book Publishers Ass. (IBPA) N.E. Literary Fiction Finalist for I Am Baybie
- Vermont Life Ralph Nading Hill Literary Award for Mr. Skiff's VW (The Lamoille Stories)
Press and Media Mentions
- Julia Alvarez mention in the New York Times of Lila & Theron 4/11/2019 "I’m in love with a form I call “the short poetic novel” — short lyrical novels that might almost be classed novellas but they tip over into something deeper, more expansive, the way a 17-syllable haiku opens up and floods the imagination. Novels like William Trevor’s “Reading Turgenev,” Kent Haruf’s “Our Souls at Night,” Julie Otsuka’s “The Buddha in the Attic,” Ron Hansen’s “Mariette in Ecstasy,” Colm Toibin’s “The Testament of Mary,” Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart,” Gwendolyn Brooks’s “Maud Martha,” David Malouf’s “Ransom,” Graham Swift’s “Mothering Sunday,” Bill Schubart’s “Lila & Theron” — oh Lord, there are so many good ones. Before I die I want to write one. They’re impossibly difficult to write. The old saw — If I’d had more time I would have written a shorter letter — applies."
- Kirkus Reviews: : "Schubart’s latest peruses the photo-album–esque memories and experiences of a Vermont farm boy. The protagonist of this dreamlike coming-of-age story, farm-boy David, is simple by disposition. David doesn’t so much come into the world as the world—in all its quotidian minutia—comes to him. David is naïve and calm, qualities discouraged by his grandmother, who lives in New York. She mothers him when David’s own mother recedes into postpartum depression. This novel, from start to finish, is David’s life, told objectively with great insight and generous detail. Schubart, a gifted writer, uses beautiful language from the very beginning to set the scene: “They gaze at him, caught in silver halide, albumen and salt print memory, these relatives with their sad, dark eyes and sepia surroundings, Fragonard backdrops…and the reticence of hands.”
- "Bill Schubart's stories of a mostly forgotten time and place are fresh, authetic, funny in places and sad in others. He knows his corner ofthe Green Mountains inside out and writes with honesty and grace about its people." Howard Frank Mosher, author of Disappearaces, Marie Blythe, and On Kingdom Mountain
- "Panhead, like Schubart's previous books -- The Lamoille Stories and Fat People -- is suffused with humor, humanity, and most of all insight. Schubart has taken his native Vermont and transformed it into a meditation on the human condition." --Ernest Hebert, author of I love u and Never Back Down
- Lila & Theron: "In a time all too rich with bombast and noise, Bill Schubart gives us a quiet tale of love, commitment, and utterly human interdependence -- at once hard and graceful, plainspoken and eloquent... a romance that sidesteps worn cliches." --Archer Mayor
- "I have long considered Bill Schubart to be the wisest columnist in America. The same wisdom, deep life experience, and empathy come shining through on every page of his new novel, Lila & Theron. Full of joy, sadness, humor, and insight, Lila &Theron is a clear-eyed celebration of our almost boundless capacity, despite all human frailties, to love both one another and the place we call home. Over the year I have known many true and good country people like Lila & and Theron whom I have been proud and honored to call my friends. This is a beautiful book." Howard Frank Mosher, author of Walking to Gatlinburg
- "I got to read Lila & Theron (in Vermont of course). Wonderful --tears in my eyes with the ending. Your artistry is superb." - Your old friend, Pat Leahy
