About
Robert Root is the author of two essay collections, Limited Sight Distance: Essays for Airwaves and Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Place; the memoir Happenstance; and the literary travel memoirs, Recovering Ruth: A Biographer’s Tale, Following Isabella: Travels in Colorado Then and Now, and Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth. An Emeritus Professor of English at Central Michigan University he also taught creative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA Program at Ashland University, the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and the Loft Literary Center. He co-edited the anthology The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction and edited or authored several other books on nonfiction. His essays have been widely published and listed as Notable Essays in Best American Essays. His website is www.rootwriting.com. He lives in Wisconsin.
Featured Work
Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth
A lyrical mix of memoir, travel writing, and environmental history. When longtime author Robert Root moves to a small town in southeast Wisconsin, he gets to know his new home by walking the same terrain traveled by three Wisconsin luminaries who were deeply rooted in place -- John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and August Derleth. Root walks with Muir at John Muir State Natural Area, with Leopold at the Shack, and with Derleth in Sac Prairie; closer to home, he traverses the Ice Age Trail, often guided by such figures as pioneering scientist Increase Lapham. Along the way, Root investigates the changes to the natural landscape over nearly two centuries, and he chronicles his own transition from someone on unfamiliar terrain to someone secure on his home ground.
