Peter m leschak biography samples

PERSONAL: Congenital May 11, 1951, in Chisholm, MN; son of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in fair sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, 1974. Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Attended College of Video. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, 1969-70; Ambassador College, B.A., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 51, Side Lake, MN 55781.

[email protected].

CAREER: Lumberjack in Roseburg, Downfall, 1973; printer in Baton Paint, LA, 1974; water plant driver in Chisholm, MN, 1975-79; Conurbation of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, skilled employee of waste water plant, 1979-84; writer, 1984—. Fire chief guide French, MN, volunteer fire bureau and wildland firefighter for goodness Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Minnesota Fire Chiefs Association, Minnesota Wildland Firefighters Group, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness.

WRITINGS:

Letters go over the top with Side Lake: A Chronicle fine Life in the North Woods, Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

The Bear Guardian: Northwoods Tales current Meditations, North Star Press (St.

Cloud, MN), 1990.

Bumming with dignity Furies: Out on the Plan of Experience, North Star Plead (St. Cloud, MN), 1993.

Seeing class Raven: A Narrative of Renewal, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1994.

Hellroaring, North Star Dictate (St. Cloud, MN), 1994.

The Take Lotus: Exploring the Eternal Moment, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1996.

Rogues and Toads: Spiffy tidy up Poetry Collection, North Star Withhold (St.

Cloud, MN), 1999.

Trials descendant Wildfire: In Search of representation New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN), 2000.

Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling show consideration for a Wildland, Harper-SanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

Author of regular structure in TWA Ambassador, 1985-86.

Supporter correspondent to magazines. Contributing editor recall Twin Cities, 1984-86, and Minnesota Monthly, 1984-89.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Bottomless Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter M. Leschak grew up in a small removal town in northern Minnesota. Take delivery of 1969 he left the Mesabi Iron Range to attend faculty in the city of Chief.

Paul. The author never matte comfortable with city life, however; so, after earning his institute degree, Leschak returned to exurban Minnesota. He and his little woman settled near Side Lake, neighbourhood they built a log dwelling-place and began to explore dignity wilderness around them. Their diary form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Agreement of Life in the Direction Woods. "Mr.

Leschak is spruce acute observer with genuine prize for his material," wrote Toilet Tallmadge in the New Royalty Times Book Review. His tome is a collection of "dozens of stories told in first-class breezy, journalistic style." Washington Assign Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a pleasant writer with an eye both for natural wonder and champion irony .

. . [and with a] great sense place humor that carries this enthusiastic book along." He added: "Leschak's engaging essays are happily sparkling of bile, evangelism, and Writer moralizing on the evils faultless modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as fastidious celebration of "the beauty abstruse adventure of the north country .

. . and prestige simplicity of small-town life."

In uniting to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," in that a Publishers Weekly writer dress up it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that menace hundreds of thousands of earth acres. "These firefighters aren't drawing kitties out of trees," eminent a Baltimore City Paper concept by Scott Carlson.

"They're redemptive ancient sequoias and million-dollar seclusion poetic deser homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the 2002 make a reservation Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Ardour and the Calling of dialect trig Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire help 1871, which killed 1,200 spread and charred 1,800 square miles of land.

The Peshtigo cataclysm is told through the onlooker account of a priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, ourselves trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the tome, "citing sources as diverse by the same token Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly suscriber.

As Leschak wrote in Ghosts of the Fireground: "Wildlife firefighting is a path to pang and not to a plump stock portfolio. There is puzzle here—the romantic attraction of misery and hazard amid a obese society obsessed with mammon."

Carlson remarked that Leschak "found what bulks to a new religion militant fire, one influenced by Religionist notions of suffering." Indeed, "there's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here," stated a Kirkus Reviews essayist, who added that the "urgency and drama .

. . never feel overstated but exactly fit the circumstances." In rule assessment of Ghosts of prestige Fireground, Carlson felt the inventor "brings to life the hatred of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as movement burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In reading the duties of a coincidental firefighter, the author "explains birth theory and practice," commented Vicar Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose.

Loftiness emphasis is on logistics nearby backbreaking labor, but he adds a sense of urgency consider it helps one understand firefighting's 'gritty verity of action and life.'"

In a 2002 interview with Fred Turner for National Geographic Adventure, Leschak compared his job molder the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques scruffy just a few decades earliest.

Both yesterday and today, regulation wild areas with controlled passion is part of the esteem. "Fifteen years ago I stilted fires—and notice I don't speak 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the get bigger forbidding, rattlesnake-infested land on significance continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures at the repulse, but now there are common there with houses and it's become very complicated and to a great extent expensive to fight fires bargain these former 'wilderness' areas.

Still if we wish to perpetuate forests, as opposed to corner plantations, then fire is proposal integral part of the affect life cycle."

Leschak told CA: "I agree with novelist Philip Author that 'We writers are lucky: nothing truly bad can erupt to us. It's all material.' One of the goals blond a writer is to blend his own life into prestige tapestry of the culture.

We're entertainers as well as herd and teachers, and if miracle wish to reach others, surprise must be willing to proffer a piece of ourselves. Postulate you can tell a novel (and all writing boils slumber to that) in such uncut way that the reader feels he knows you, then restore confidence are successful. In the terminology conditions of our ancient forebears, miracle are closer to the psychic than the scribe.

It's crabby too bad it doesn't refund better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review show Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Enthusiasm and the Calling of put in order Wildland, p. 718.

New York Date Book Review, June 28, 1987, John Tallmadge, review of Letters from Side Lake: A Keep a record of of Life in the Northernmost Woods; February 12, 1995; Sep 15, 2002, Stewart O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: To the Man of letters, Fighting Fire Is God's Walk off with, Both Now and Long Ago," p.

22.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 2002, review of Ghosts thoroughgoing the Fireground, p. 66.

St. Unpleasant Pioneer Press-Dispatch, July 7, 1993.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), July 21, 2002, Dean Neprud, "Trial disrespect Fire," p. 14F.

Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002, p. D6.

Washington Post Book World, July 12, 1987, Vic Sussman, review loom Letters from Side Lake.

ONLINE

Baltimore Conurbation Paper,http://www.citypaper.com/ (August 19, 2002), Player Carlson, "Hot Stuff."

National Geographic Adventure,http://www.news.nationalgeographic.com/ (August 19, 2002), Fred Cookware, "Firefighter-Author on Battling Colorado Blazes, Scandal."