Deschutes Public Library is pleased to welcome Oregon author Peter Rock for a reading and book discussion as part of the Good Chair Great Books series at the Sisters Public Library on Wednesday, June 23 at 6:30 pm. Rock is the author of four novels including the recently published, My Abandonment (Harcourt) and a story collection, The Unsettling. The reading is free and open to the public.

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 works highlight the lives, trials and tribulations of society’s disenfranchised and marginalized citizens. The characters he brings to life in his novels 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 Forrest 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 at the Sisters Library.

For more information about this or other library programs please visit the library web site at www.dpls.us or call 312-1032. People with disabilities needing accommodations (alternative formats, seating or auxiliary aides) should contact Liz at 312-1032.