Dropped out of high school, 1967

Went to work in a fastener factory as a barrel plater on the graveyard shift. Worked about six months to build up some savings.

Admitted to Lincoln College, Lincoln Illinois without a HS diploma.
~~~ thank you Lincoln College!

April - December 1968

Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois.
~~ BA in English & American literature; with philosophy minor

1976 - 1990 (off & on, obviously)

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Current Occupations

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. He makes some of his own clothes and is learning to make and scrimshaw powder horns. He also blogs & has made a documentary film about life on the Virginia frontier. Wheelbarrow made by Omanson with ironwork by blacksmith Greg Bray.

Owner: Monongahela Books

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Previous Occupations

Previous employment as laborer in Illinois, Minnesota, Olympic Peninsula (Washington), Colorado, West Virginia.

1967 – 1997

barrel plater, drill press operator, furniture factory worker, autoworker, tree trimmer, logger, cedar mill worker, truck driver, taxi driver, gardener, day laborer, fruit picker, groundskeeper, nurseryman, librarian, barn restorer, farmhand, gravedigger, custodian, nurse's aide, teamster (draft horses)

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Blogs, Publications

BJ Omanson maintains two professional blogs:

The Fine Arts Tatler:
news & reviews from the School of Fine Arts,
Fairmont State University

In addition he writes four other blogs:

History & Lore of the Old World War:
artifacts & odd bits from 1914-1918

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 has been reissued as part of the Joseph Bruccoli Great War Series, with a critical introduction by Dana Gioia.

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

An article on Fairmont State University's webpage:
FSU Staff Member BJ Omanson Releases New Book

BJ Omanson's poems and literary criticism have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Verse, Sparrow, The Pennsylvania Review and the Academy of American Poets anthology, New Voices, 1989-1998.

Selected Poems, 1986-2011

Stark County
Poems:
War &
the Depression
Come to
Spoon River