Essayist, Poet, playwright, and short story writer ROBERT VIVIAN grew up in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha. He has had over twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway. Several have been published, with monologues appearing in the international anthologies Best Men and Women's Stage Monologues from 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998. He holds the PhD in English from University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

Among his most recent plays is Something is Wrong, performed in Omaha by the Blue Barn Theatre. His current project is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts for Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, New York, which will premiere in February, 2006. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Jabberwock, Janus Head, The New York Quarterly, River Teeth, Sycamore Review, Turnrow, and elsewhere.

His collection of creative nonfiction, Cold Snap as Yearning, (University of Nebraska Press, 2002) won the Midland of Society Awards in for Nonfiction and the Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction in that same year. Many of the book's essays first appeared in Harper's, Creative Nonfiction, Salt Hill, Sycamore Review, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2004 Iowa Short Fiction Award for his collection Eating the Bible. New work is out or forthcoming in Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Essays have been included in the list of Notable Essays in Best American Essays (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005). His first novel, The Mover of Bones, is due out from the University of Nebraska Press in fall of 2006. He is an assistant professor of English at Alma College in Michigan.

To hear Vivian read from his own work, please visit the Vincent Voice Library, here.