Bruce Moody was a staff writer with The National
Lampoon in its heyday. His fiction has appeared
in The New Yorker, Botteghe Oscure, Works, The Michigan
Quarterly, and his columns have appeared in The
National Review, Look, and The Greenwich Village
News.
His first novel, The Decline and Fall of Daphne
Finn, was published by Coward McCann, and
was widely reviewed and generously praised. His
poetry has won prizes and appeared in many publications.
An unexpected chapter in Moody's personal and literary
life occurred when he was 60 years old, and he suddenly
lost his day job and could not find another. He
had always found paying work to support his true
passion, writing, but now to keep a roof over his
head, he was forced to do the unthinkable—stand
beside a Bay Area roadside, hold up a sign, and
beg.
That experience was excruciating—but also
exquisite. The book Moody wrote about the experience,
Will Work For Food Or $, eventually won praise
and prizes, but a key benefit he received from his
time begging—apart from the kindness of many
strangers—was the growing knowledge he should
return to the theatre, a calling he'd left years
before. And this he gratefully did.
Since then, Moody has appeared in many plays in
the Bay Area. Now that his series of plays Skittish!
is being produced, he is grateful to the point of
glee!
Bruce Moody's memoir, Will Work For Food or
$, was a finalist for the Indie Awards for
The Best Biography Of 2004. It was chosen as Best
Of The Bay by The East Bay Express. And it won the
AAAA Prize for the Best Biography Of The Year.
