Bill Broder

Bill Broder was born and brought up in Detroit. He graduated from Columbia College, served in the Navy, and wrote and taught writing as a Teaching Assistant under Wallace Stegner and Richard Scowcroft at Stanford. His latest book, A Prayer for the Departed, appeared in 2011 and is available through Amazon. His novel, Taking Care of Cleo, appeared in 2006. It was chosen as one of six fiction finalists in the Great Lakes Book Awards and was one of twenty books from all categories chosen as a Notable Book of 2007 by the Michigan Library Foundation. Broder has published two other books of fiction: The Sacred Hoop, Sierra Club Books (1979 and paperback 1992); Remember the time, written with his wife, Gloria Kurian Broder, Newmarket Press, 1983.

Broder has also acted as member, Executive Director and Artistic Director of a playwrights workshop, California On Stage, and has completed a number of full-length plays. Abalone! was produced in Carmel, California. His other plays have received staged readings in the Bay Area by Equity actors at the Upstart Stage, The Plays in Progress Series at A.C.T., The Western Stage Theater Company, the New Playwrights Festival, and New Visions Festival. Two of his plays were presented as staged readings at The Second and Third Annual California Studies Conference in Sacramento, California.

Professionally, Broder has worked extensively as a free-lance writer, specializing in the writing, design, and production of educational materials for museums, schools, exhibitions, and publishing companies. Broder worked with Gordon Ashby Associates on the Coyote Point Museum of Environmental Education, The St. Supery Winery, and the Oakland Museum. He wrote the tour for the 150th Anniversary Exhibit of the Gold Rush at the Oakland Museum. He also wrote, edited, and helped design four annual publications of the Sierra Club Almanac for Young People (poetry, images, natural facts, and experiments) (Scribners).