About the Author

Tom Spanbauer was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho. Not really. The Princess Theater wasn t anymore by the time he came on the scene. He went to Catholic School until the eighth grade and then to Pocatello High School, then graduated from the newly finished Highland High. Five years at Idaho State University and he received a BA in English with a minor in German. In 1969 Tom went into the Peace Corps and he spent two years in Kenya, East Africa. Then came the 70s and the Married Years in Boise, Idaho. In 1978, Tom set himself free and moved to New England, then Key West, the finally settled in New York City for seven years. Tom, a survivor of AIDS, has lived and worked in Portland for fifteen years where he teaches Dangerous Writing. His novels include Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City of Shy Hunters, and Now Is The Hour.
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Reviews

I Loved You More Spanbauer relays from the start that Hank succumbs to cancer before he and Ben can make up the rift that springs from Ben's jealousy, so once the destruction unfolds in the final act, it happens at a riveting, fast pace. By turns poignant and funny, Spanbauer's story rings true at every turn. Publishers Weekly Starred Review The fireworks that ensue between these strong-willed people over the course of book--not to mention the raw psychic scars and corrosive feelings that are ever-prevalent--are gripping. Spanbauer's talent is to collide all emotions against one another, quite often on the same page and sometimes in the same paragraph.--Christopher Carbone, Kirkus Reviews Spanbauer simply unpacks imagery, events, and dialogue without judgment, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. If anything, I Loved You More provides an empathic view of bisexual relationships as the most natural in the world, perhaps the most generous expression of love and shared strength for the survival of humanity.--Rachel Wexelbaum, Lambda Literary Tom Spanbauer, gifted anatomist of messy emotions and rangy sexuality, returns with I Loved You More.--Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair A masterful novel of what becomes of us long after we've "come of age" and done all the brave things we thought would save us. Tom Spanbauer's pages pulse with life in all its messy beauty.
--Ariel Gore, Publisher of Hip Mama Magazine and author of How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights Intelligence, wit, generosity, love, wisdom, insight, humility, guts, heart-crushing truth and spirit-lifting grace--it's all there in I Loved You More. This is Tom Spanbauer's wrenching and beautiful masterpiece.
--Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail A great read, I Loved You More is a brutal and beautiful book of love, sex, and friendship that begins in the impossible but totally mesmerizing decade of the 1980s and spans the next twenty years.
--Sam Adams, Former Mayor of Portland, Oregon Tom Spanbauer's I Loved You More is the most important book on sexuality, love, and the low down of relationships that I have ever read. The brilliant language is an epic ballad so deeply rendered it killed me and resurrected me a page at a time. This book is not a love story. It guts the heart of the cliché love story and hands it back to you, beating. Love is the endless falling.
--Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Dora: A Headcase Faraway Places
The thing about Tom Spanbauer is--he is the real deal. [Faraway Places] is masterly - a near perfect book. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant - and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the storyline builds and then like a well timed firework explodes - surprising, enthralling, captivating.
-- A.M. Homes, Author of May We Be Forgiven A taut, brutal narrative ... that comes to hypnotize, shimmering like the brilliant sun on the alfalfa fields.
--The New York Times Book Review Forceful and moving ... Spanbauer tells his short, brutal story with delicacy and deep respect for place and character.
--Publishers Weekly No magical realism. No myth or legend. No Chinook winds. Just a man and his life and what it meant to him. The bad parts and the good parts, and what those parts have assembled. [I Loved You More]is beautiful and brilliant and every other positive adjective I can rain down upon it.--Rob Hart, Lit Reactor It's a classic triangle and it unfolds with all the wit, sexual candor, and humility that Spanbauer can summon. All his novels, and this one in particular, embody the advice a rock critic once gave his young protégé "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool."--Angie Jabine, The Oregonian I Loved You More is the most personal book we've seen yet from an author who's important to so many of us. It reads like the deliberate unpacking of one man's personal mythology - self-delusion and doubt and vanity and anger and lust and all the bad parts, along with the good.--Alison Hallett, The Portland Mercury While Shakespeare offered us cross-dressing as a way to push beyond the binary notion of love, Cunningham and now Spanbauer have given us a more complex view of human sexuality, and what it means to really love someone.--Melissa Duclos, Book Trib Portland author Tom Spanbauer could be considered responsible for some of the best and most widely recognized contemporary writing to come out of the Pacific Northwest, both in his own acclaimed novels like Faraway Places and Now Is the Hour as well as from the authors who have emerged from the writing group he founded, like Chuck Palahniuk, Chelsea Cain and Cheryl Strayed. Spanbauer's fifth novel and newest release, I Loved You More, follows the themes of his previous work by examining the heartbreak of relationships and deeper issues of sexuality.--Penelope Bass, The Willamette Week I Loved You More is very right now, and yet it's also timeless. I thought of Hemingway's unfinished novel, "Garden of Eden" -- a book about a young married couple who bring another woman into their relationship, and before long the marriage is in pieces - as I read Tom's book...It's a hell of a book.--Michael Goldberg, Days of the Wild Crazy I Loved You More is breathtaking for its audacity. Spanbauer is unflinching as he looks at physical need and carnal desire...He certainly does plunge into territory that many writers would not dare approach. And while he runs the risk of having readers interpret his work as exhibitionism, Spanbauer probably would argue it would be more outrageous still not to acknowledge that such complexities exist and deserve to be considered.--Barbara Lloyd McMichael, The Seattle Times [I Loved You More] is the sort of lifelong story of adoration and refusal and unrequited love that John Irving made his fortune on, but it's better than that, because it's delivered in Spanbauer's gorgeous voice.--Paul Constant, The Stranger I Loved You More is about the power of words. There are many passages in the novel that achieve dizzying heights of unabashed beauty and lyricism.--Sally Hessney, A&U: American's AIDS Magazine At Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle last month, Spanbauer treated a packed house to a portion of I Loved You More that serves as an overture to its torrid relationships. Closing the book, he took a moment to regain himself before taking questions. He said, "People ask me why I write, and I tell them it's because I can't cry and speak at the same time."--Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness Feelings are complex, and love is never really just love, and Grunewald (and by default to some degree, Spanbauer), realizes this. There is a lot to love about this book--Matty Byloos, Nailed Magazine Ben Grunewald is an outspoken character whom readers will fall in love with.Spanbauer has crafted a meticulously conceived and executed novel brimming with heart, soul, and the unique kind of affections found in both platonic and romantic love.--Jim Piechorta, Bay Area Reporter This is a book about taking your whole life to be able to tell your own love story--not the one you are supposed to have, but the one that is yours--and then telling it as truthfully as possible.--Valerie Stivers, HTMLGIANT The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
The miracle of this novel it that it obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth. Tom Spanbauer's wild West is the hurly-burly of the mind. He takes us into territories where few of us would ever dare to go. -- The New York Times Book Review Haunting and earthy, this deeply felt tale of love and loss... Spanbauer fuses raunchy dialogue, pathos, local color, heartbreak and a serious investigation of racism in this stunning narrative.
-- Publishers Weekly Gender and racial lines are bent out of shape in this tale of turn-of-the-century Idaho spun by a youth who is part Indian, not quite wholly homosexual, and in the grip of a powerful imagination. Spanbauer creates a pansexual West that John Wayne wouldn't have recognized.
-- Kirkus Reviews A visceral, sprawling tragic-comidy... The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is equal parts bizarre Bildungsroman, raucous picaresque, and hard-driving wild-West yarn.
-- New York Magazine A masterful plot... Delightfully unpredictable and compelling.
-- Library Journal Every once in a while a reviewer comes across a book that seems so startlingly original and true that it redeems everything: art, life, the human spirit, a reviewer's job... Tom Spanbauer's novel The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is such a book.
-- Willamette Week In The City of Shy Hunters
An expertly drawn, starkly authentic, early-1980s Manhattan provides the setting for this sprawling novel by Spanbauer. Spanbauer's rapid-fire narration and clipped sentences generate a surprising amount of tension and gritty emotion, as does his vibrant, dead-on dialogue and keen sense of place. This is a big, brazen, histrionic work of fiction, one that pays respectable, if unsentimental, homage to a devastating period in gay history.
-- Publishers Weekly Unlike other "early AIDS" novels, this one acknowledges that AIDS touches all classes, races, religions, and sexual orientations. Excellent characters (real New Yorkers), great writing, and a new twist on an over-used plot recommend this book for most libraries, though some readers might want a more conventional ending.
-- Library Journal A master narrator and stylist... In the City of Shy Hunters is so finely crafted, Spanbauer's characters so true to life, the New York City he remembers from the early days of the plague so exactly captures in its "unrelenting" mess and glory, you'll think you've been reading a modernist classic.
-- Peter Kurth, Salon.com Spanbauer's genius resides even in the asides... teas[ing] out the genuine complexity of human love.
-- Thomas McGonigle, The Washington Post In the City of Shy Hunters has the earmarks of a literary landmark. ... Its importance and originality are unmistakable.
-- Laura Demanski, The Baltimore Sun Ambitious and compelling... a mixture of the ghastly, the hilariousism and the curiously touching.
-- John Hartl, The Seattle Times In the City of Shy Hunters is a chronicle of deaths foretold, a journal of the plague years when AIDS swept through the city and destroyed a culture that had barely taken hold.
-- Jeff Baker, The Oregonian Tom Spanbauer breaks all the rules in his new novel In the City of Shy Hunters - rules of grammar, rules of social propriety, rules of sanctioned sexuality, rules that keep a novelist at a desk, on a page, in the real world. -- M. L. Lyke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Mesmerizing dialogue and gritty characters immediately startle you. ...The book may consist of letters typed upon a page, but those words transcend mere storytelling by nearly leaping forth and materializing into a stunning theatrical presentation. This writing as performance art... Our beloved Spanbauer has retaken center stage. He has surpassed the art of writing dangerously to create the theater of writing dramatically.
-- Susan Wickstorm, Willamette Week A big ambitious stylefest of a novel, in the mode of...Edmund White's The Farewell Symphony, Allan Gurganus's Plays Well with Others, and Dale Peak's Now It's Time to Say Goodbye... What distinguishes Spanbauer's novel from the rest of the pack is his hellish, distinctive voice. Longtime fans will recognize its unusual sentences, at once choppy and strangely elegant, overtly informative but weirdly surreal, tender of phrase yet cleansed of overt emotion.
-- Dennis Cooper, The Village Voice In the City of Shy Hunters is near-epic in its emotional scope, a sprawling story that recalls at once the freewheeling black comedy of Ken Kesey's work, the spiritual quest at the heart of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and some of the precise diction of Gertrude Stein. ...There is such a myriad of small truths here that the cumulative effect is overwhelming...Fascinating and compelling.
-- Ken Furtado, Lambda Book Report Now is the Hour
Publishers Weekly choice for one of the best 100 books of 2006 This author can write. You feel pulled in immediately just by the rhythms of his language. Then by his great humor, his vast heart. There is no one like Tom Spanbauer writing in America. What a terrific novel! What a huge talent --Natalie Goldberg, Author of Writing Down the Bones In Tom Spanbauer's Now Is the Hour, white small-town America gets its cherry busted in an orgy of cigarette smoke and racism.
--Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club