Ru Marshall is an American writer, artist and critic. As a visual artist, they have exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. Marshall's first novel, ''A Separate Reality'', was published in 2006 by Carrol & Graf and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction. They are currently at work on a biography of

Carlos Castaneda Carlos César Salvador Arana (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998), better known as Carlos Castaneda, was an American anthropologist and writer. Starting in 1968, Castaneda published a series of books that describe a training in shamanism t ...

. Marshall was born in

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...

to the journalists Maxine and Jonathan Marshall, and was named after his great-uncle, the wilderness activist Robert Marshall. They grew up in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...

and now live in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

''Writing''

Ru Marshall earned a BA in 1982 from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

in Middletown, Connecticut. They also attended the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase th ...

. They were a member of the activist group

ACT UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...

in the 1990s. Set in Phoenix in the early seventies, Marshall's first novel, ''A Separate Reality'', is at once a gender-non conforming coming of age tale and the story of a New Age crisis of faith. The novel was well received and reviewed by The Washington Post, The Literary Review, The Orlando Sentinel, The Phoenix New Times, Bay Windows, the Lambda Book Report and by writers such as Robert Gluck (Jack the Modernist), Lynne Tillman (No Lease on Life), Christopher Bram (Gods and Monsters), and others. Debra Liese, from the

Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years b ...

, said ''"This quietly intelligent debut novel about one lonely, creative adolescent's search for identity amid the indignities of middle-school life is precisely what most literary novels I've read this year are not: as deeply sincere as it is ironic...Like Holden Caufield and adolescent narrators everywhere, Mark is painfully aware of falsity, but in Marshall's hands, this awareness is elevated to the level of a philosophical inquiry."

Wayne Koestenbaum Wayne Koestenbaum (born 1958) is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He has published over 20 books to date. Koestenbaum works as a Distinguished Profess ...

, author of

The Queen's Throat ''The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire'' is a 1993 book by Wayne Koestenbaum. Summary Koestenbaum explores the relationship between gay men and opera, with frequent reference to his own experiences. In particular, ...

, said "A beautifully understated and evocative rendering of what it feels like to grow up as a 'misfit'...Robert Marshall's closeups of youthful sadness and elation, like Truffaut's or Bresson's or Solondz's, have a bitter, alienated clarity."'' Their fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in ''

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...

,'' ''N + 1 online, Evergreen Review, Another Chicago Magazine,'' '' The Michigan Quarterly Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly,'' ''Event, Blue Lake Review,'' ''Ducts,'' ''Stickman Review, Public Books,'' ''Alembic, Crack the Spine,'' ''Blithe House Quarterly, Foliate Oak,'' and numerous other publications including the anthologies ''Queer 13'' and ''Afterwords''. In 2007, their investigative feature, ''The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda'', revealed the story of the secretive cult started by the controversial anthropologist, and told the story of the five women who disappeared following his death in 1998. It was chosen for Best of Salon 2007. Soon after, Marshall began work on a comprehensive biography of Castaneda. Their pursuit of this story led to a confrontation with law enforcement officials in Death Valley in 2014. In 2016, the Biographers International Organization awarded Marshall the Hazel Rowley Prize for this biography-in- progress. Marshall coproduced the first two season of the podcast ''Trickster'', which is based on their forthcoming biography. Their criticism has appeared in

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City. It is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly-traded company based in Berlin that is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Ex ...

, PAJ, the Lambda Literary Review, and Public Books. In 2017, Marshall organized Writers Resist Trump, a large-scale lobbying effort and demonstration that accompanied the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference in Washington D.C. Marshall told ''Publishers Weekly:'' "I looked and didn't see anything about people going to congress, and I thought that was a little weird." They then began talking to like-minded friends and started a Facebook group to plan and gather participants.

Art Career

Marshall began to exhibit in New York City in the early '90s. Since then their work has appeared at such venues as the Baxter Street Gallery, Richard Anderson Fine Arts, The Thread Waxing Space, Art in General, White Columns, Derek Eller Gallery, Triple Candie, Bronwyn Keenan Gallery, Steffany Martz Gallery, The Drawing Center, Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery, Amy Lipton Gallery, Berland/Hall Gallery, Peter Kilchmann Galerie (Zurich), Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas (Buenos Aires), 2B Gallery (Budapest), Gallery 32 (London), the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, The Other Side Gallery (Memphis), Art and Idea (Mexico City), Wessel O'Connor Gallery, and the John Tevis Project Space. They have also participated in panels at venues such as Dillon and Lee Gallery, Studio 10, and have also been a guest at Yaddo. They are a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Performing Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Banff Centre and the

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

. From 2002 to 2005, Marshall served as director of Prose in General, a reading series at Art in General focusing on the intersection of fiction and the visual arts. In 2004, they started teaching at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP) is a photography museum and school at 84 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. ICP's photographic collection, reading room, and archives are at Mana Contemporary in Jer ...

in New York City. They are currently the director of the Pretext Reading Series at Studio 10 Gallery in Brooklyn, where their exhibition ''"Passing Through"'' opened in November, 2017. In his review for

Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinki ...

, Stephen Maine said ''"Commonplace yet unsettling, Robert Marshall's dreamlike images are derived from fleeting, fragmentary glimpses of the passing land- and cityscape, seen through the window of a moving car or train. The territory is not as familiar as it sounds. Marshall's contribution to on-the-road photography is unique, and transcends both the genre and the medium."''

Prose and poetry on the web

''Life stories''

''Prussian blue''
*
Limbo
' *
The Candy
'
''Breaking News''

''AWP''

''A Florida Boy''

''Passages'' and ''Objectivity in Brooklyn''

''Topic: Death by Antonio dal Masetto'' (translation)
*
The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda
'

References

External links

Ru Marshall's website

William Ramsey Interview with Robert(a) Marshall about Castaneda

Interview with Robert(a) Marshall
Yale University Radio WYBCX *
A Separate Reality: A Novel
'

GoodReads Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and readi ...

"The Witches Of Westwood And Carlos Castaneda's Sinister Legacy"
Hadley Meares *
Biographer Turns Detective in Quest for Complete Picture
, Michael Burgan
"Robert Marshall on Carlos Castaneda"

To The Best of Our Knowledge ''To the Best of Our Knowledge'' (also known by the acronym TTBOOK) is a weekly public-radio interview program produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by PRX. It is broadcast on more than 180 public radio stations in the U.S. and it a ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Ru 21st-century American non-fiction writers Writers from New York City Poets from New York (state) Writers from Phoenix, Arizona Poets from Arizona American non-fiction crime writers Writers from Eugene, Oregon Poets from Oregon 21st-century American poets American male poets 1960 births Living people 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers