Celebrate Oregon Author Peter Rock
Posted By: Liz Goodrich
Date Posted: 10/27/2009
Deschutes Public Library is pleased to highlight Peter Rock, author of four novels including the recently published, My Abandonment (Harcourt) and a story collection, The Unsettling, during the month of November with programs and readings as part of the Celebrate Oregon Authors series being offered through 2009. Rock will be reading at the Bend Public Library on November 14 at 3:00 pm and at the Sisters Public Library on November 15 at 1:00. The readinngs are free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale at both readings.
Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared widely. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and other awards, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is an Associate Professor in the English Department of Reed College. Rock’s novels and stories highlight the lives, trials and tribulations of society’s disenfranchised and marginalized citizens. The characters he brings to life are often homeless, desperate, and struggling. My Abandonment, published in March 2009, is based on the true story of a father and daughter who lived for five years, undetected, in Portland’s Forest Park. Narrated by thirteen year old Caroline, My Abandonment is both a look into the lives of the homeless and a study of people who purposefully live outside of the mainstream and create their own society. At the end of the novel, Caroline ends up in Central Oregon, specifically Sisters, where she finds employment and is mentored by the head librarian.
For more information about this or other library programs or ADA information please call 312-1032.