Will Hobbs

Will Hobbs (born August 22, 1947) is the American author of twenty novels for upper elementary, middle school and young adult readers, as well as two picture book stories.

Hobbs credits his sense of audience to his fourteen years of teaching reading and English in southwest Colorado.

When he turned to writing, he set his stories mostly in wild places he knew from firsthand experience.

Hobbs has said he wants to “take young people into the outdoors and engage their sense of wonder.” Bearstone, his second novel, gained national attention when it took the place of Where the Red Fern Grows as the unabridged novel in Prentice-Hall’s 7th grade literature anthology.

“During the years we were living in Alaska,” Hobbs has written, “I fell in love with mountains, rivers, fishing, baseball, and books.” In 1969 Will Hobbs graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in English.

His M.A. in English from Stanford followed in 1971.

He and his wife, Jean, were married in December 1972.

Drawn by the San Juan Mountains to southwestern Colorado, they found teaching jobs in Pagosa Springs.

After four years they resettled in the Durango area, where Hobbs taught for ten years at Miller Junior High.

Summers he devoted to writing, backpacking, and rowing his whitewater raft through the canyons of the Southwest.

Hobbs rowed ten trips down the Grand Canyon.

In 1990 he began writing full-time.

His professional travels have taken him to 47 states, Canada, and Germany, where six of his novels have been published in the German language.

Other foreign editions have appeared in Sweden, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.K.

Downriver and Far North were selected by the American Library Association for its list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of the 20th century.

William Carl Hobbs grew up in an Air Force family and was raised in Panama, Virginia, Alaska, northern California, southern California, and Texas.

He was the middle child of five born to Mary Ann (Rhodes) Hobbs and Gregory J. Hobbs.