Peter Rock

Peter Rock is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His adult novel My Abandonment won the Alex Award.

Rock's new YA novel is Klickitat.

From his Q & A with Pique Beyond the Book:

There seems to be something in the air with survivalist stories lately. Your character Audra wants to practice wilderness survival and is inspired by a writer and naturalist named Tom Brown, Jr. How did you first encounter Brown’s work and why do you think Audra is so enamored with him?

Several years ago I was working on a book, The Shelter Cycle, which was inspired by a church in Montana that believed the world might/would end in 1990, and built vast underground shelters, where they planned to live for up to seven years. I was driving around this strange landscape, above where various shelters were buried, with one of these believers, and he told me that one night, deep underground, another member of the church told him about Tom Brown, Jr., a “true adept,” and so I started reading Brown’s works. One of my contacts had even gone to the special training camps Brown runs out in the wilderness of New Jersey–part of what draws Audra, and anyone, is this sense that if we were more attuned, as animals are, to our environment, we’d be both happier and more aware of all the invisible signs around us. I myself almost got some research money to go train with Brown. His story is fascinating, too; he claims to have had various lessons and wisdom passed down to him from “Grandfather,” a Native American who took Brown under his wing, but many suspect that story is not true, so there are many haters. But Brown’s books are fascinating; I have spent an especially large time reading his books about how children might...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Peter Rock's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Abandonment.

The Page 69 Test: The Shelter Cycle.

Writers Read: Peter Rock.

--Marshal Zeringue