Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen was a novelist, naturalist and explorer whose work moved between fiction and nonfiction. Born in New York City, he graduated from Yale University in 1950 and the following year co-founded the literary magazine The Paris Review.

His novels include At Play in the Fields of the Lord, a 1966 National Book Award finalist, and Far Tortuga, along with a trilogy about the Florida outlaw E. J. Watson that began with Killing Mister Watson. He later reworked that trilogy into the single novel Shadow Country (2008), which won the 2008 National Book Award for Fiction. His nonfiction grew out of years of travel and fieldwork and includes The Tree Where Man Was Born and The Snow Leopard, an account of a journey in the Himalayas that won the 1979 National Book Award in the Contemporary Thought category.

Across both forms, his writing returned again and again to wild places, wildlife and the people who live close to the land.