A former Chicago Tribune columnist, Robert Wolf has roamed America for most of his life, writing his version of the American story and getting others to write theirs. In 1990 he established Free River Press, a non-profit publishing house whose primary purpose is to have people without literary ambition document their lives in its writing workshops. The press’s writing workshops and publications have been featured on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” and in virtually every major daily newspaper in the country.

An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk, edited by Wolf and published by Oxford University Press, is a sampling of Free River Press writings by small town folk, farmers and homeless individuals in the Midwest and South. Wolf’s other books include Jump Start: How to Write from Everyday Life, also published by Oxford University Press, The Triumph of Technique: The Industrialization of Agriculture and the Destruction of Rural America (Ruskin Press), and Crazeology: The Autobiography of a Chicago Jazz Musician (University of Illinois Press).

Wolf’s writings have appeared in numerous magazines, including North American Review, Down Beat, Inland Architect, and Sculpture Magazine. In 1994 Wolf won the Sigma Delta Chi Awar d from the Society of Professional Journalists for the Best Radio Editorial of the Year. Wolf was playwright-in-residence for the San Quentin Drama Workshop and dramaturge for Chicago’s Organic Theater Company.