Read "A Search for America," a narrative history of Free River Press.

1989. Writing workshop is established at MATTHEW 25, a shelter for homeless men in Nashville. It includes women as well as men, homeless and non-homeless. National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" airs a story on the workshop. Steven Meinbresse, Coordinator of Homeless Services for the State of Tennessee and Robert Wolf decide to create a non-profit press to publish homeless writings.

1990. Writing workshops for the homeless are established in Memphis by antiquarian map dealer and former farmer Murray Hudson and in Knoxville by formerly homeless poet Diana Schooler. Free River Press is incorporated as a non-profit educational corporation chartered in Tennessee.

1990-1991. Free River Press publishes six books by the homeless.

1991. Nashville workshop leader Robert Wolf moves to rural Iowa and establishes a workshop with local farm families. The first farm book, Voices from the Land, is featured on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and in an Associated Press story that runs in almost every major newspaper in the country.

1992-1994. Small Midwestern towns begin sponsoring 3-day Free River Press writing workshops for residents, resulting in a series of self-portraits of rural villages, including the Amana Colonies.

1995. "CBS Sunday Morning" produces a feature on Free River Press. The press publishes its first regional anthology, Heartland Portrait.

1995-Present. The press runs workshops in west Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas, collecting stories for its forthcoming anthology of Mississippi Delta writings.

1997. Free River Press publishes The Northeast Iowa Book, the first multi-county regional development book of its kind.

1999. Oxford University Press publishes a collection of Free River Press writings, An American Mosaic: Prose and Poetry by Everyday Folk. First Chicago workshop organized.

2001. Work begins on a six-county regional development book, The Iowa River Corridor Book, co-sponsored with The Center for Prairie Studies at Grinnell College and the Iowa Valley Resource, Conservation & Development agency.

2002. Free River Press runs workshops in Manhattan and Teaneck, New Jersey for Jews and Palestinians with firsthand experience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, annual writing workshops collecting New York City stories begin.

2003 Publication of Violence in the Holy Land. Contributors read at Riverside Church.

2004 Workshops at the 63rd Street YMCA in New York. The Riverside Church workshop writers read at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.

2006 Through grants from the McCune Charitable Foundation, FRP conducts workshops in New Mexico to document cultural change in the state. The first New Mexico volume, Ayer Y Ahora, is published. Robert Wolf conducts five days of writing workshops at Pojoaque Pueblo.

2007 FRP wins a Heritage Preservation Award for Publication from the State of New Mexico for Ayer Y Ahora. Voices from Pojoaque Pueblo is published.

2008 The early history of Free River Press appears in the January 2008 issue of "The Journal of Rural Mental Health," published by the Idaho State University Press. It is based on a talk given by Wolf in August 2007 in Kansas City to the 2008 Annual Conference of the National Association for Rural Mental Health. Click here to read the article.