New fiction from Bill Roorbach

Bill Roorbach has announced on his blog, Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, that his new novel, The High Side, is scheduled to appear in print next spring. I can’t tell you how excited I am by this: I’ve long been a big fan of Bill — his writing but also his nature, because he’s one of the coolest guys I’ve ever had the privilege to meet — and his nonfiction is among my favorite prose in print. (Seriously. Go buy a copy of Temple Stream. Check it out from the library first if you want to, but you’re going to want to own this book, because you’ll be reading it more than once.) But the first Roorbach I read was his short fiction, in his award-winning story collection Big Bend, which appeared around the same time as his first novel, The Smallest Color, and I’ve been hankering after more fiction for a long time now. So I’m thrilled that this time next year I’ll be settling in with a new novel from one of my favorite writers.

Rock on, Bill. (And never cut your hair.)