Bill Brown

William J. Brown (aka Bill Brown) is a writer, translator, publisher and photographer. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1959. He wrote about music for "The Ann Arbor News" between 1981 and 1984. in 1983, he founded his own fanzine, NOT BORED!, which is still being published today. In 1990, he received a Ph.D. in American literature and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design between 1990 and 1994. An anthology of his writings for the Surveillance Camera Players, a street-theater group he co-founded in New York in 1996, was published by Factory School Books ("We Know You Are Watching" 2006).

Under the name "Colossal Books," Bill has self-published eight books since 2009. They include an anthology of his writings for The Ann Arbor News ("You Should've Heard Just What I Seen" 2010); a book about Buffalo, New York and the invention of the grain elevator ("American Colossus" 2009); an "NOT BORED! Anthology" in 2011; a book of photographs of murals in community gardens in the Lower East Side of Manhattan ("Fenced Off, Obscured or Painted Over" 2011"); an anthology of writings circa 1923-1948 by his grandfather, William Z. Spiegelman ("A Jewish Life" 2012); two translations from French into English (Gianni Giovanelli's "Never Work: The Autobiography of Salvatore Messana" 2013 and Gianfranco Sanguinetti's "Truthful Report on the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy" 2014); and a critical history of the music of Lou Reed ("Words and Guitar" 2013).