Sam Weller
Sam Weller
Sam Welleris an American journalist and author, best known for being writer Ray Bradbury's authorized biographer. Weller's 2005 book, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradburyis a full-biography while his 2010 Listen to the Echoes, The Ray Bradbury Interviewsis a collection of interviews, photos, mementos, and artifacts. Weller's 2014 Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview: And Other Conversationsfeatures his last interview with Bradbury, and recounts Bradbury's influences, creative processes, and love for writing and reading...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth31 January 1967
CountryUnited States of America
I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.
Although he moved away from the Midwest for good at the age of thirteen, Ray Bradbury is a prairie writer. The prairie is in his voice, and it is his moral compass. It is his years spent in Waukegan, Illinois - later rechristened by Ray as 'Green Town' in many books and stories - that forever shaped him.
Andrew Carnegie loved libraries; he knew their importance to an educated society and as anchors to our communities. And so, just as some loyal baseball fans travel to attend games at all 30 major league stadiums, over the last decade or so, I have slowly, casually, visited Carnegie libraries whenever I am on the road.
Libraries are at a cultural crossroads. Some proffer that libraries as we know them may go away altogether, ironic victims of the information age where Google has subverted Dewey decimal and researchers can access anything on a handheld device. Who needs to venture deep into the stacks when answers are but a click away?
Ray Bradbury has a vacation house in Palm Springs, California, in the desert at the base of the Santa Rosa mountains. It's a Rat Pack-era affair, with a chrome-and-turquoise kitchen and a small swimming pool in back.
Ray Bradbury's connections to fantasy, space, cinema, to the macabre and the melancholy, were all born of his years spent running, jumping, galloping through the woods, across the fields, and down the brick-paved streets of Waukegan.