Bill Hillmann

Hillmann was born in Chicago in 1982,[1] and grew up on the city's North Side. He attended St. Joseph High School.[2] He has a bachelor's degree from Elmhurst College and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago.[3]

As an author, Hillmann is the author of the novel The Old Neighborhood (2014),[4][5][6][7] and the nonfiction book Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls (2015)[8][9] which was translated and published in Spain as Corriendo con Hemingway (2016).[1][10]

As a journalist, Hillmann has written for NPR as well as for publications including the Toronto Star, Playboy, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Daily Mail, Los Angeles Times, Stuff, and The Washington Post.[11][12][13][3][14]

As a storyteller, Hillmann is the creator of the Windy City Story Slam.[15][16] He also created the National Story Slam, in which ten storytellers representing different storytelling series across the country performed at the main stage of the Chicago Tribune Printer's Row Lit Fest.[17][18][19] He has told stories at storytelling series in Philadelphia,[20] Portland,[21] San Francisco,[22] and Boston,[23] and won the Boulder Story Slam in Boulder, Colorado in 2014.[24] He has produced and performed in Story Slam events in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,[25][26] has participated in Book Slam, London's literary nightclub,[27] and has told stories on NPR's The Story and Snap Judgment.[28][29]

Hillmann is a 2002 Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champion representing the Windy City Gym and a two time selection for the Chicago Golden Gloves International Traveling Team.[3][7][30] As a boxing journalist, Hillmann was the Chicago correspondent for Fightnews, and is the special boxing contributor for the Chicago Tribune RedEye.[31][32]

Hillmann is an experienced participant in running of the bulls, and has been described as "the best young bull runner from the United States".[33] He has given expert commentary on the running of the bulls for CNN,[34] The Today Show,[35] CBS This Morning,[36] BBC World Service,[37] and Esquire Network.[38] His audio essay "Running with the Bulls in Pamplona" for WBEZ Chicago Public Radio won an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association in 2010.[39]

He was inspired to join the tradition by Ernest Hemingway's book The Sun Also Rises,[40][41] and has taken part in the bull runs in Pamplona since 2005.[41][42][43] In 2011 and 2012 he wrote how-to guides on the running of the bulls for Outside magazine.[43][44] By 2013 he had acquired the nickname "Buffalo Bill Hillmann", and in 2014 he co-authored the book Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona with Alexander Fiske-Harrison and John Hemingway.[45][46]

On July 9, 2014, a bull named Bravito [47](Spanish for Brave one), gored Hillmann twice in the thigh at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona,[45][46][48] but he returned to bull-running in Pamplona in 2015,[41] and published his memoir, Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls.[8] In the summer of 2016 he ran with the bulls more than 200 times in towns throughout Spain.[49][50] He has stated that his favorite running of the bulls is the oldest, in Cuéllar, a small town about two hours north of Madrid, where hundreds of horsemen guide the bulls 3 miles (5 km) to the town and into the run.[41][42][51]

On July 8, 2017, he was gored by one of the bulls from José Escolar in Pamplona.[52]

• The Old Neighborhood: A Novel. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing. 2014. ISBN 978-1-9404-3000-3.
• Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls of Spain. Chicago, Illinois: Curbside Splendor Publishing. 2015. ISBN 978-1-9404-3053-9.
• Corriendo con Hemingway: Un Mozo Americano en los San Fermines (in Spanish). Barcelona: Ediciones Península, Planeta Group. 2016. ISBN 978-8-4994-2521-4; translation of Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls of Spain
• Hillmann, Bill (2021). The Pueblos: My Quest to Run 101 Bull Runs in the Small Towns of Spain. Chicago, Illinois: Tortoise Books. ISBN 978-1-9489-5417-4.

• Official blog