Straight Cut (28 page)

Bell at age three, the age his mother taught him to read. He credits this early start for his development as a writer later in life.

Bell with the family’s first sheep, Backson. Bell himself named the sheep based on a dream he had about “Backson the buffalo, with trailing blue wings.”

Bell as a young writer, age eleven.

The Bell family on their Tennessee farm in 1970.

Bell, pictured at age thirteen with a brood sow, was responsible for the care of the animals.

Author photos taken in New York in the early 1980s for the publication of Bell’s first novel,
The Washington Square Ensemble.
Selections from this shoot were eventually used for Bell’s second novel,
Waiting for the End of the World
. (Photo courtesy of Peter Taub.)

Bell on a visit to Haiti in 1999. He occasionally stayed at this particular
lakou
(a communal compound where several families live and share a common space) and here is learning how to plant and weed with a machete.

Bell in 1999, teaching his daughter to shoot. Here they are practicing on mistletoe.

Bell teaching a class at Ensworth School, his former elementary school in Nashville.

Bell in a rowboat on a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, in 2005. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had just moved to Paris a few months prior.