BOB ROSS is the author of nine stories comprising Billy Above the Roofs, as well as Solitary Confinement, a book of poems, and In the Kingdom of Grass, a book of essays. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, and in Brown County, Nebraska, and has taught college English in six different states, all of them west of the Missouri. His writing reflects the small-town culture of the Sandhills region of Nebraska, where he grew up working weekends on a cattle ranch. He has retired from teaching, is actively writing fiction, and aspires to be remembered for his portraits of characters with whom he might not sympathize or agree.