Robert Wolf (born c. 1944) is an American writer, journalist, and entrepreneur. His non-fiction writing focuses on everyday life, frequently that of farmers and other rural Americans.[1]
Robert Wolf spent his formative years wandering the United States, searching for the "American Soul." As an adolescent his goal was to "work every job in the country, live in every town and city and have conversations with everyone."During the 1960s and 70s, Wolf hitchhiked and rode freight trains across country, while seeking out iconic American types. Poets & Writers wrote "he was a ranch hand in New Mexico, a journalist in Chicago, a teacher in an inner-city Brooklyn school and at a penitentiary, as well as a doctoral candidate in philosophy, a dabbler in art, a hitchhiker and hobo."
By 1987, having settled in Chicago, Wolf wrote a weekly column and features for the Chicago Tribune. In 1988 he married singer and artist Bonnie Koloc and the couple moved to Nashville, where Wolf organized a writing workshop for the homeless. In 1990, Wolf, along with Steven Meinbresse, established Free River Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Initially intended as a publishing vehicle for the homeless, Wolf expanded the press's mission to "create a collective autobiography of America.
When Wolf and Koloc moved to rural Iowa, Wolf began running writing workshops for neighboring farmers. The workshop resulted in three books published by Free River Press. Since then Wolf has conducted workshops not only throughout the Midwest, but in the Mississippi Delta, the Southwest, and in New York and Chicago.
His early Iowa experiences led Wolf to begin writing about the ongoing farm and rural crisis and to begin, in 1994, writing about the need for rural America to develop self-reliant, decentralized regional economies.[2]
