Like the character played by Robert Redford in the movie Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Rick Bass has seemingly abandoned cities to live in the remote wilderness of the western Rockies, preferring the lessons and companionship of nature over those of man. A prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Bass often explores in his work the relationship between humankind and nature, seeking to evoke humanity's innate but concealed wildness. Bass has won many awards in his career as a writer, including a General Electric Younger Writers Award and a P.E.N./Nelson Algren Award special citation in 1988. Indicative of Bass's status as one of the most promising of American writers, his short stories have been anthologized in the 1988, 1991, and 1992 editions of Best American Short Stories; Prize Stories 1989: The O. Henry Awards; the thirteenth, fifteenth, and eighteenth editions of The Pushcart Prize; and Best Stories from the South (1988).

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