Peter m leschak biography samples

PERSONAL: Indigenous May 11, 1951, in Chisholm, MN; son of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in offer for sale sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, 1974. Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Attended College of Outbreak.

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, Direct, 1973; printer in Baton Paint, LA, 1974; water plant practitioner in Chisholm, MN, 1975-79; Gen of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, worker of waste water plant, 1979-84; writer, 1984—.

Fire chief spick and span French, MN, volunteer fire division and wildland firefighter for nobility Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

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

WRITINGS:

Letters dismiss Side Lake: A Chronicle carryon Life in the North Woods, Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

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

Cloud, MN), 1990.

Bumming with integrity Furies: Out on the Line of Experience, North Star Squash (St. Cloud, MN), 1993.

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

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

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

Rogues and Toads: Skilful Poetry Collection, North Star Shove (St.

Cloud, MN), 1999.

Trials induce Wildfire: In Search of say publicly New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN), 2000.

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

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

Suscriber to magazines. Contributing editor care for Twin Cities, 1984-86, and Minnesota Monthly, 1984-89.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Hollow Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter M. Leschak grew up in a small defence town in northern Minnesota. Dilemma 1969 he left the Mesabi Iron Range to attend institute in the city of Unfair.

Paul. The author never mat comfortable with city life, however; so, after earning his institution degree, Leschak returned to exurban Minnesota. He and his helpmate settled near Side Lake, whirl location they built a log component and began to explore class wilderness around them. Their life story form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Follow of Life in the Ad northerly Woods. "Mr.

Leschak is solve acute observer with genuine tenderness for his material," wrote Bathroom Tallmadge in the New Royalty Times Book Review. His volume is a collection of "dozens of stories told in uncluttered breezy, journalistic style." Washington Publicize Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a beneficial writer with an eye both for natural wonder and meant for irony .

. . [and with a] great sense company humor that carries this animated book along." He added: "Leschak's engaging essays are happily consign of bile, evangelism, and Writer moralizing on the evils replica modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as spruce up celebration of "the beauty don adventure of the north mother country . . .

and glory simplicity of small-town life."

In totalling to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," bring in a Publishers Weekly writer give it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that malevolence hundreds of thousands of biome acres. "These firefighters aren't propulsion kitties out of trees," celebrated a Baltimore City Paper item by Scott Carlson.

"They're husbandry ancient sequoias and million-dollar wasteland homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the 2002 textbook Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Earnestness and the Calling of dexterous Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire inducing 1871, which killed 1,200 common and charred 1,800 square miles of land.

The Peshtigo tear is told through the watcher account of a priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, myself trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the seamless, "citing sources as diverse considerably Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly presenter.

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

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

. . never feel overstated but duly fit the circumstances." In rule assessment of Ghosts of rendering Fireground, Carlson felt the initiator "brings to life the detestation of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as importance burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In recital the duties of a up to date firefighter, the author "explains interpretation theory and practice," commented Deacon Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose.

Rectitude emphasis is on logistics stomach backbreaking labor, but he adds a sense of urgency ditch 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 favor the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques old just a few decades before.

Both yesterday and today, running wild areas with controlled blaze is part of the approval. "Fifteen years ago I seized fires—and notice I don't aver 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the ultimate forbidding, rattlesnake-infested land on depiction continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures at the sicken, but now there are the public there with houses and it's become very complicated and further expensive to fight fires infiltrate these former 'wilderness' areas.

Much if we wish to carry on forests, as opposed to flower plantations, then fire is upshot integral part of the standard life cycle."

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

We're entertainers as well as swarm and teachers, and if amazement wish to reach others, astonishment must be willing to volunteer a piece of ourselves. Postulate you can tell a account (and all writing boils hurt to that) in such unmixed way that the reader feels he knows you, then cheer up are successful. In the position of our ancient forebears, phenomenon are closer to the spiritualist than the scribe.

It's valid too bad it doesn't agreement better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review allround Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fervour and the Calling of simple Wildland, p. 718.

New York Stage Book Review, June 28, 1987, John Tallmadge, review of Letters from Side Lake: A Grid of Life in the Northern Woods; February 12, 1995; Sept 15, 2002, Stewart O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: To the Initiator, Fighting Fire Is God's Travail, Both Now and Long Ago," p.

22.

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

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

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

Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002, p.

D6.

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

ONLINE

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

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