Learning Chaos

Bob Ward’s first novel, Shedding Skin, showed up in 1968, capturing his gypsy years between Baltimore and Haight Ashbury. He taught school for a short time until Tom Wolfe urged him to write again. He paid attention and moved to New York City to join the new journalism movement, hotfooting it from piece to piece for GQ, Rolling Stone and other major publications. He’s written novels, movie scripts (including Cattle Annie and Little Britches with Burt Lancaster and Diane Lane); TV—award-winning, long-running Hill Street Blues, and was show runner (Head Honcho) for Miami Vice. I’m currently reading Renegades, an outrageous compendium of his road trips and celebrity interviews. The Stone Carrier, a new novel about a gonzo journalist in New York, will be published shortly. Bob also plays a mean guitar. He and his wife Celeste live in L.A.