A year-round book festival dedicated to great conversations with today's best writers.

Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen is considered to be one of the foremost writers of the twentieth century. A two-time National Book Award winner and three-time National Book Award nominee, the author is both a novelist and non-fiction writer as well as an American Indian rights and environmental rights advocate. He has written 10 fiction and 22 non-fiction works.

In 1980, at age 81, he received his second National Book Award for “Shadow Country,” an “epic of American rise and descent – poetic, mythic, devastating.” The book contained Matthiessen’s three famous stand-alone Watson novels, woven together and slimmed down into a modern American epic critics hailed as a “masterpiece.” His first National Book Award was won for “The Snow Leopard,” which has been called a classic of modern nature writing.  His book “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” was a National Book Award nominee.

In 1959, Mathiessen published the first edition of “Wildlife in America,”a history of the extinction and endangerment of various animal and bird species because of human settlements throughout North American history, as well as historical efforts at endangered species protection.  It was one of the first books to call attention to global warming.

He later became interested in the Wounded Knee Incident and the 1976 trial and conviction of Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist, and wrote a non-fiction account, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.  He has been honored by many Native American Tribes for his Indian Rights activism.

Along with George Plimpton and others, Matthiessen co-founded The Paris Review, a highly respected literary journal.

Matthiessen later became a Buddhist priest and continues his practice today.

Matthiessen appeared onstage with Doug Stanton in Fall 2010, after conducting a wildly-popular Master Class for writers in the Grand Traverse Region.