When he has not been spending days, seasons, or years as a variety of creatures and characters, Bill Ayres has spent most of his life running or helping to run bookstores.
His work has appeared in Commonweal, Sojourners, The Holllins Critic, Plainsongs....
His previous books are What Passes for Wisdom—mostly about folk parables (The Squeaky Wheel, The Bird in the Hand...)—and Jesus Poems, about the life and the words of Christ.
In his new book, We Share the World, Bill Ayres shares his life story. It has been an unconventional life.
When he changed back into his human form after spending a year and a half as a river he did not stop being polluted.
When he transformed from fly to man, he found his love for sugar had grown. Every change changed him.
As a horse and as a worm he found how much he enjoyed service. Being a child, a dog, a bank robber, were all part of his education—more even than his time at Va. Wesleyan College and at the Muse.
He only spent a month flapping in the breeze as the star-spangled banner but it taught him how cold and afraid he could be. He has been grass, a cloud, a witch, an elk....
Don't tell him you have always been human. Don't say you've always been the same person. he won't believe you.
