After college he hitchhiked from Maine to Miami, and from Texas to Seattle; worked as a ranch-hand on an exotic game ranch near Brenham, Texas; and ended up in Milwaukee where he worked as a nurse's aide in a mental hospital. In 1984, Horan moved with wife-to-be to Italy to teach English. He eventually returned to the states in 1986 and enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing, but changed his mind at the last minute and was in the first class of students to receive a Master’s of Arts in Teaching from Pitt in 1988. He then accepted a teaching position in rural New Hampshire; taught English and coached football there for two years. In 1992, he accepted a teaching position with the Department of Defense and went overseas to Belgium and a few years later to Seoul, South Korea. In 1997, Richard returned to Wisconsin after the publication of his first novel, Life in the Rainbow, by Steerforth Press; taught at a military academy and a public high school until 2001 when his second novel, Goose Music, was published. In 2002, Horan accepted a job as a composition instructor and writing center coordinator at SUNY Oswego and began writing non-fiction reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Times, St. Petersburg Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and others. He is presently at work on his next travelogue entitled, Harvest: One Man's Journey To Discover America's Great Farms. The book will be published by Harper Collins and is due out in 2012.
