About the Publishers

Bill Porter

Bill Porter was born in Russellville and grew up in Sheffield, Alabama.  He went to the University of the South and graduated, eventually.  It took a while because he couldn’t resist the lure of the road in April.  After he did some time in the Marines to avoid the draft, he got married and finished his last few credits at Columbia in New York.  While he was there, in the summer of 1964, he read Vermont was losing population.  He and Ruth drove all over the state, delivering his resumé to newspapers. The Rutland Herald hired him at $50 a week as a beginning reporter.  After three years, he became the Assistant Managing Editor.  In 1973, he moved to Barre as the Managing Editor of the Herald’s sister paper, the Times-Argus.  In 1985 he went out on his own as a writer.  He revised what Dill said in To Kill A Mockingbird – “I can write.  You got anything that needs writin, I can do it.”  He prepared the annual report for Green Mountain Power for twelve years and won a prize for every one.  Then he retired and took his retirement money to learn about investing.  Along the way, he built up his farm, learned to be a pretty good mechanic, wrote a novel, and started Bar Nothing Books.

Ruth King Porter

Ruth King Porter was born in New York City. She grew up in a small town in Ohio and graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. She and her husband, Bill Porter, came to Vermont in 1964 when Bill got a job on the Rutland Herald. In 1973 they moved to a farm in Adamant near Montpelier, where they have lived ever since. Porter raised their four children and most of their food and farm animals. She collaborated with her aunt, Bertha Frothingham, to edit a book of Maxwell Perkins’ personal letters, Father To Daughter. Porter has also written a one-man show about Perkins and has written and published two novels, The Simple Life (2006), and Ordinary Magic (2010).