Bobby Burns

Bobby is the author of the best-selling non-fiction book Shelter: One Man’s Journey from homelessness to hope - published by the University of Arizona Press in 1998. The book is now in its second printing. It’s a true story about his life living in a Tucson Homeless Shelter in the 1990’s. Chapters from his book have been adopted into several college textbooks.

The book has been featured in Publishers Weekly twice, Kirkus Book Review, and other newspapers. He’s published poems in the Louisiana Review and his interview of the late poet Ai was published in Sonora Review in spring 2002. Other publications include Sandscript Magazine in 2009-10 and other poetry publications.

While working at Louisiana State University in 2005, he did an interview of novelist Ernest Gaines in New Roads, Louisiana and it was published in Oxford Magazine in 2006. Bobby’s written opinion editorials for the Tucson Citizen and Arizona Daily Star newspaper’s from 1996-2009.

He currently writes for the Arizona Informant Newspaper, a Phoenix weekly African American newspaper. Bobby earned a masters degree from Northern Arizona University and a BA degree from Arizona State University . He’s employed with a community college in Tucson, Arizona . He’s a former Primavera Foundation board member, a local homeless advocacy organization in Tucson. He’s often asked to speak at the local homeless memorial service for street people who have died on the streets. He’s also spoken before several other groups: churches, schools, non-profits, and civic groups.