Bob Welch

Contributor

Bob Welch has been a fixture in Pacific Northwest newspaper journalism for more than 40 years, including 14 as a general columnist at The Register-Guard in Eugene. 

He twice won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ “Best Writing” category for papers under 100,000 circulation, once for general columns and once for humor.

After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, Welch worked for The Bulletin in Bend (sports editor and, later, Sunday editor). In 1983, he joined The Journal-American in Bellevue, Washington, where he was a features writer, then features editor and finally, a general columnist. 

For a series on volunteering in a medical clinic in Haiti, Welch won the Seattle Times’ C.B. Blethen Memorial Award for “distinguished feature writing” in 1989.

That same year, he began at The R-G, a paper he’d dreamed of working at since being a part-time sportswriter there while going to school at the UO.

Before becoming a contributing local columnist to Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Welch served as an associate editor in the editorial department of The R-G from 2016 to 2018.

Welch authored more than two dozen books, including “American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy,” an Oregon Book Award finalist, and “The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High-Jump Revolution,” Track & Field Writers of America’s 2019 Book of the Year.

He collaborated with Diane Carlson Evans on her book, “Healing Wounds”, which inspired novelist Kristin Hannah’s 2024 No. 1-bestselling novel about a Vietnam combat nurse, “The Women”. 

Welch is founder/director of the Beachside Writers Workshop and is a former adjunct professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. 

He is the author of a weekly independent Substack column — Heart, Humor & Hope.

Bob Welch lives in Eugene.