About

Bob Keyes is a Maine-based and nationally-recognized arts writer and storyteller with specialties in American visual arts and the contemporary culture of New England. Born and raised near Boston, he has spent more than 15 years writing about arts and culture for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram.

In September 2021, Boston-based Godine will publish “The Isolation Artist: Scandal, Deception, and the Last Days of Robert Indiana,” which Keyes wrote based on 15 years of writing about Indiana and reporting on his suspicious death and a series of dramatic lawsuits alleging fraud and abuse.

His interest in writing and journalism began when he and a childhood friend launched a short-lived but spirited weekly neighborhood newsletter and continued through college in Georgia, where Bob learned he could integrate his interest in arts and entertainment with his desire to write. His professional career began in the newsroom at the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine, and continued at the Greenwich Time in Connecticut and the Argus Leader in the wilds of South Dakota. Bob returned to Maine and Press Herald in 2002.

He has won numerous prizes, and his writing has been widely recognized for its contribution to the public discourse about the role of arts and culture in society. In 2017, he won the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism, given to the top arts writers in the country and accompanied by a $50,000 prize. The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance gave him its Distinguished Achievement Award in 2014, and Bob was part of the inaugural class of the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater in 2004.

He lives in Berwick, Maine, with his wife and stepson.