Welcome
What readers are saying about my newest novel
"Diver proves to be one of those books that walks straight into your heart, parks at dead center and never leaves. Nor would you wish it to. An almost shockingly tender account of a son's unalloyed love for his late father, across time and geography… Buzbee's tale feels both cinematic and nakedly personal, told in simple yet shining prose".
San Francisco Chronicle
"A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son's love. Buzbee achieves a complex amalgam of celebration and lament; his narrator adores his father and sees his 'heroic life' as a model of manhood, but precisely because of this adoration, he experiences his dad's loss as a catastrophic blow. Overall, it's an admirably meditative exploration of the depths and travails of a father-son relationship."
Kirkus Reviews
"There is powerful storytelling at play in Buzbee's latest book. The well-known portrait of a parent as seen through the child's lens is elevated through Buzbee's original framework and unadorned honesty. Every recounted memory is somehow depicted intimately while avoiding sentimentality—and this quality had me quickly turning pages."
Lit Stack
"Diver is a gem, engaging from first page to last. It is honest, sincere, genuine, inspiring and heartbreaking, but mostly it is full of love. It is Buzbee's finest book."
Andy Weiner, author of Down by the River
I'm a fourth generation California immigrant who began writing in 1972, at the unripe age of 15, after reading the first chapter of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I sold my first two short stories in 1979 and have been published, and unpublished, since. For ten years I was a bookseller, at indie bookshops in the SF Bay Area, and then for another 10 years worked in publishing, most of that time with Chronicle Books. I've also been a dishwasher, a caterer, a bartender, and a teacher of writing. I live a hawk's swoop from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, with my wife, the poet Julie Bruck.
I've published three novels for younger readers: Steinbeck's Ghost, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, and Bridge of Time.
My books for adults include The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom, Fliegelman's Desire, After the Gold Rush, and First to Leave Before the Sun. My newest novel is Diver.
My poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Lit Hub, Lit Stack, Harper's, GQ, New York Times Books Review, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, San Francisco Chronicle, and scores of other magazines and journals. My interviews with Raymond Carver have been widely anthologized and translated into 9 languages, and my one-hit wonder poem "Sunday, Tarzan in His Hammock" has over 200,000 copies in print (click the Tarzan link on this page). Perhaps the pinnacle of my writing career is a letter published in MAD Magazine.
I am represented by Allison Remcheck at Stimola Literary Studio. Member of The Authors Guild, since 1990.