October 29, 2010
City Opera House
Listen:
[audio:https://nationalwritersseries.org/wp-content/audio/Peter_Matthiessen_NWS.mp3]
Peter Matthiessen was joined onstage by National Writers Series founder and New York Times best-selling author Doug Stanton for a lively and entertaining conversation about Matthiessen’s books, work and life, as well as an interactive audience Q&A. The evening concluded with a reception and book signing with the author.
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 advocate and former C.I.A. recruit. Matthiessen is also co-founder of the Paris Review, started in 1953. The National Book Foundation called his 2008 winner, 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 other works include the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard, which has been called a classic of modern nature writing, and , a National Book Award nominee. Matthiessen currently lives in New York.