Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, BJ Omanson was born and raised along Spoon River in Stark County, Illinois.

At age 22, after finding himself unemployed following a bitter Teamster's strike with the Rockford Park District, Omanson hitch-hiked to the northwest coast in November 1972 with $5 & a change of clothes, and spent the next 11 months living in a lean-to on the Olympic Peninsula along the Calawah and Hoh Rivers, partly living off the land and working in the woods as a logger, cedar bolt cutter and mill worker.

He has worked in Illinois, Washington State, Colorado and Minnesota as a barrel plater, drill press operator, furniture factory worker, auto-worker, tree trimmer, truck driver, bus driver, taxi driver, gardener, fruit picker, groundskeeper, nurseryman, barn restorer, farmhand, librarian, grave-digger, custodian, nurse's aide on a locked ward for the criminally insane, and teamster (draft horses).

Omanson currently works as an historical interpreter at Pricketts Fort near Fairmont, West Virginia, and is owner of the online bookstore, Monongahela Books, specializing in American history and culture.

His publications include poetry, literary criticism, theatre and art reviews, and military history.

Omanson annotated a book of World War I poetry for the University of South Carolina Press, This Man's Army: A War in Fifty-odd Sonnets by John Allan Wyeth, a staff officer with the 33rd Division, AEF. Completely unknown when Omanson rediscovered him in the early '90s, Wyeth is now widely recognized as the most significant American poet of WWI. His 1928 collection of war sonnets was reissued in 2008 as part of the Joseph Bruccoli Great War Series, with critical introduction by Dana Gioia.




Omanson also wrote chapter introductions and annotations for the memoir of a WWI Marine, Louis Linn, a private with the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 2nd Division AEF, released by McFarland Publishers in 2012 under the title, At Belleau Wood with Rifle and Sketchpad: Memoir of a United States Marine in World War I.




Stark County Poems: War & the Depression Come to Spoon River was published by Monongahela Books in 2013, containing twenty-five narrative poems in traditional forms written over a period of thirty years, depicting life between the wars along the upper Spoon River in Illinois.


BJ Omanson's poems and literary criticism have appeared in The Stark County News, The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Verse, Sparrow: A Yearbook of the Sonnet, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, The Pennsylvania Review, Best American Poetry and the Academy of American Poets anthology, New Voices, 1989-1998. Twenty-one of Omanson's Stark County poems were featured in the book Stark County, Illinois: History and Families, published by the Stark County Genealogical Society and Acclaim Press in 2012.

Current Occupation Historical interpreter at Pricketts Fort, Fairmont, West Virginia May 2007 – Present Omanson's primary work is to research & recreate the 18-century frontier farm which was closely based on the slash & burn agriculture of native tribes. He grows 18th-century heirloom native corn, squash, pumpkins, pole beans, gourds & melons, also turnips, potatoes, buckwheat, and a little tobacco. He also looks after the sheep and chickens. Omanson discusses & demonstrates many other aspects of 18th century frontier life for the public. He makes some of his own clothes and is learning scrimshaw (gourds for now, powder horns to come). He also blogs for the fort ( Fortblog: Living history behind the scenes at Pricketts Fort), edited the Pricketts Fort interpreter's manual, organized the fort library, administered the "Teaching History through the Arts" program for a season, & made a documentary film about life on the Virginia frontier which plays continuously in the fort museum. Wheelbarrow made by Omanson with ironwork by blacksmith Greg Bray.

Omanson's garden & cabin at Pricketts Fort

wattle fence built by Omanson, with gourd-top finials to prolong the life of the posts-- the fence is quite strong and will serve to keep the sheep out of the herb garden

scrimshawed gourds by Omanson, employing 18th century flask & powderhorn motifs