Rouse is a "laugh-out-loud-funny" (NBC's Today Show), "wise, witty and wicked" (USA Today) writer who "beautifully combines humor and pathos" (Out Magazine), and, in a short time has established himself as "an original writer and impressive new voice" (The Washington Post) whose "combination of honest emotion and evocative prose seems destined to be a hit!" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Hi, Amazonians! (I'm 5'7", so I've always dreamed of being an Amazonian!)

I live on the coast of Michigan, where - in between beach weather and blizzards - I write memoirs and battle for bed space with my partner, Gary, and our beloved mutts, Marge (a 12-year-old Husky-Ridgeback-Collie'ish sort of dame) and Mable (a 2-year-old Labradoodle-beagle inbred who looks like an insane bat).

I am the author of three, critically-acclaimed memoirs, including America's Boy, Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler, and my latest, At Least in the City Somone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life, about two neurotic urbanites (guess who?) that quit their jobs, and leave the city, cable and consumerism behind in order to move to the Michigan woods and recreate a modern-day Walden. At Least in the City Somone Would Hear Me Scream has already been named a Summer Must-Read by the Today Show, Detroit Free-Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Out Magazine, Chicago Magazine, St. Louis Magazine, Frontiers Magazine and bestselling memoirist Jen Lancaster's "Jennsylvania" blog.

I have been thrilled to see my books and writing be lauded and named to multiple "Best of the Year" lists by such influential media and booksellers as the Today Show, USA Today, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Detroit Free-Press, Out, Genre, Entertainment Weekly, OK! Weekly, Chicago Public Radio, Michigan Public Radio, WGN and KMOX Radio, as well as B&N, Border's, Target, and the nation's independent booksellers.

America's Boy, my memoir of growing up gay in the Ozarks, was named by Border's as one of its Best Books (Literary Memoirs) of 2006 (alongside Gore Vidal, Jonathan Franzen, Gay Talese and Augusten Burroughs), "A Best Book of 2006" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as well as a May 2006 BookSense selection by the nation's independent booksellers. The memoir was also included as part of the American Library Association's inaugural "Rainbow List" of recommended books for GLBT young readers and their families, and PFLAG has placed "America's Boy" on its permanent must-read list for families.

My second memoir, Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler, about my former job catering to a Lilly Pulitzer-clad clique of "Mean Mommies" at an elite prep school, was selected by both Barnes & Noble and Target as a Breakout Bestseller, and Entertainment Weekly called it "funny"!

I was a contributing writer to the humorous essay collection on working in retail, The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (Counterpoint-Soft Skull Press/October 2008). The book was featured prominently on NPR and in the "Wall Street Journal." My essay on working at Sears (Yikes! The Husky Years!) was selected to kick off the collection.

My essays and articles have appeared in numerous regional and national magazines, and collections. I earned my B.A. in communications (with honors) from Drury University and my master's in journalism from Northwestern University.

I am currently working on my next two memoirs: Why Is Santa Taking Daddy's Lipitor?: And Other Heartwarming Holiday Tales, a compilation of tender, torturous and touching tales about my family's holidays and America's obsession with picture-perfect holidays. And the other is an untitled memoir about my gentile mother's battle with cancer and her obsession with visiting the Wailing Wall befores she dies.

For more, please visit my web site at www.waderouse.com

From Publishers Weekly

Having escaped the idiocy of rural life in his growing-up-gay-in-the-Ozarks memoir America's Boy, the author returns to it in this flamboyant fish-out-of-water saga. Inspired by Thoreau, Rouse and his partner moved to a cottage near the Michigan resort town of Saugatuck in order to simplify; wean himself from his addictions to shopping, tanning and cable; and resolve childhood traumas by being brashly gay in a nonurban setting. Saugatuck is actually quite gay-friendly, but trials abound: the eerie quiet of the countryside, the apocalyptic snows, a marauding raccoon fended off with lip balm and breath spray, the scarcity of gourmet yuppie-chow, the humiliation of wearing waders instead of Kenneth Cole boots, the slow, unfashionable locals who ask, rather perceptively, 'Don't you ever take anything seriously... things that don't affect only you?' Rouse's battle with his own narcissism is a losing one; indeed, it feels like the real point of offering his pink-outfitted self to the suspicious gazes of hunters and other yokels is simply to accentuate what a fascinating spectacle he is. Alas, Rouse's comically campy, but rarely truly funny, writing is so trite that few readers will share his self-involvement. (June)

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From Booklist

As he turns 40, Rouse (Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, 2007) admits to becoming “the ultimate cliché”: he’s mentally and physically exhausted, hates his job, and realizes there is a void in his life that the city is no longer filling. He and his partner, Gary, take a vacation in Saugatuck, Michigan, “a Midwestern Martha’s Vineyard,” and on the spot decide to sell their home in St. Louis and move to the woods. Rouse vows to become a “modern-day Thoreau” and sets out to follow 10 life goals, roughly along the tenets espoused by Thoreau in Walden, Rouse’s favorite book. Rouse chronicles the hilarious escapades of these “two neurotic urbanites” as they ensconce themselves in the woods without magazine subscriptions, malls, Trader Joe’s, HGTV, or lattes. Rouse feels like a Martian confronting the locals at the general store, and suffers extreme anxiety when attempting ice fishing and karaoke. Gay or straight, any reader who has tried to “fit in” somewhere outside his or her comfort zone will readily empathize with Rouse’s rousing and ultimately successful lifestyle change. --Deborah Donovan