Rickstad is a novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, Reap, was published by Viking/Penguin to high acclaim. His unnerving novels, stories, and scripts strip back the bucolic veneer of rural America and root around in its tragic and blackly comic underbelly. Their hardened prose, seductive plots, crack dialog, and iconic characters have been lauded by readers and critics alike to put him among the ranks of Robert Stone, Denis Johnson, Russell Banks, and David Lynch.

He was raised in Vermont by a mother who worked as a hardware store clerk. His father, who vanished when Rickstad was ten, owned a bait & tackle shop where Rickstad first learned about story telling by sitting around and listening to old timers jaw and bullshit and argue.

Boyhood exposed Rickstad to marijuana growers, criminals, cons, and raconteurs as he worked as a bricklayer, roofer, house painter, and logger. One friend was imprisoned for growing marijuana; another friend shot to death by state police in the first live televised fugitive chase. 

Rickstad’s writing led him from the Vermont woods to the halls of The University of Virginia where Faulkner, Poe and Breece Pancake left their marks. Here, as a Hoyns Fellow, he wrote Reap and classic American short stories.

He lives in Vermont.