BILLSMOOT

Bill Smoot’s bio begins in his coming-of-age years in Maysville, Kentucky, where he was blessed by loving parents and a friendly and familiar town. A boy of the fifties, he played baseball, spent time on his grandparents’ dairy farm, and showed their cows in the county fair. He was a Boy Scout.

He went off to Purdue University intending to study engineering, but changed his major to philosophy. He came of age politically working as editor of the student newspaper, The Purdue Exponent. As editor, he waged a battle with the administration for freedom of the student press, a struggle that led to the paper’s becoming independent. He became the subject of an FBI file, which he thought of as his merit badge in activism. 

At Northwestern University, Bill Smoot received his PhD in philosophy, specializing in ethics, existentialism, and the philosophy of art. He made his way west where he spent the years writing fiction and essays and teaching in a variety of schools and colleges. His love of teaching inspired him to interview teachers across the country and compile the interviews in a book, Conversations with Great Teachers. The book is dedicated to his mother, a Latin teacher.

For the past decade Bill Smoot has taught at Mount Tamalpais College in San Quentin Prison. He writes novels, short stories, and essays. He has just completed a novel about a classics professor obsesses with the Eleusinian Mystery religion of ancient Greece. He lives in Berkeley. Bill Smoot’s bio would not be complete without praise for his trusty German Shepherd, Artemis, who works as a therapy dog in various venues.