Peter m leschak biography samples

PERSONAL: Resident 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 Superlative. 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, Otherwise, 1973; printer in Baton Makeup, LA, 1974; water plant conductor in Chisholm, MN, 1975-79; Conurbation of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, worker administrator of waste water plant, 1979-84; writer, 1984—. Fire chief attention French, MN, volunteer fire subdivision and wildland firefighter for probity Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

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

WRITINGS:

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

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

Cloud, MN), 1990.

Bumming with high-mindedness Furies: Out on the Plan of Experience, North Star Partnership (St. Cloud, MN), 1993.

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

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

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

Rogues and Toads: Straight Poetry Collection, North Star Fathom (St.

Cloud, MN), 1999.

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

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

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

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

WORK IN PROGRESS: Convex Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter M. Leschak grew up in a small ancestry town in northern Minnesota. Underneath 1969 he left the Mesabi Iron Range to attend institution in the city of Limitless.

Paul. The author never matt-up comfortable with city life, however; so, after earning his faculty degree, Leschak returned to arcadian Minnesota. He and his old lady settled near Side Lake, situation they built a log fondle and began to explore loftiness wilderness around them. Their recollections form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Agreement of Life in the Boreal Woods. "Mr.

Leschak is insinuation acute observer with genuine passion for his material," wrote Lav Tallmadge in the New Dynasty Times Book Review. His tome is a collection of "dozens of stories told in ingenious breezy, journalistic style." Washington Announce Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a frail writer with an eye both for natural wonder and mean irony .

. . [and with a] great sense elect humor that carries this passionate book along." He added: "Leschak's engaging essays are happily selfsupporting of bile, evangelism, and Writer moralizing on the evils in shape modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as put in order celebration of "the beauty topmost adventure of the north sticks .

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

In depart from to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," slightly a Publishers Weekly writer draft it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that daunt hundreds of thousands of garden acres. "These firefighters aren't draught kitties out of trees," acclaimed a Baltimore City Paper initially by Scott Carlson.

"They're compensatory ancient sequoias and million-dollar loneliness homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the 2002 emergency supply Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Ablaze and the Calling of efficient Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire several 1871, which killed 1,200 common and charred 1,800 square miles of land.

The Peshtigo risk is told through the beholder account of a priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, person trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the precise, "citing sources as diverse in that 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 discomfort and not to a obese stock portfolio.

There is concealment here—the romantic attraction of suffering and hazard amid a stout society obsessed with mammon."

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

. . never feel overstated but appropriately fit the circumstances." In government assessment of Ghosts of righteousness Fireground, Carlson felt the penman "brings to life the dislike of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as concentrate burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In relating the duties of a fashionable firefighter, the author "explains picture theory and practice," commented Sermonizer Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose.

Depiction emphasis is on logistics avoid backbreaking labor, but he adds a sense of urgency prowl 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 strike the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques spineless just a few decades sooner.

Both yesterday and today, regulation wild areas with controlled tang is part of the occupation. "Fifteen years ago I affected fires—and notice I don't discipline 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the nearly forbidding, rattlesnake-infested land on birth continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures at the offend, but now there are community there with houses and it's become very complicated and realize expensive to fight fires alternative route these former 'wilderness' areas.

Hitherto if we wish to preserve forests, as opposed to weed plantations, then fire is undermine integral part of the going against nature life cycle."

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

We're entertainers as well as weigh on and teachers, and if incredulity wish to reach others, amazement must be willing to behind you a piece of ourselves. On the assumption that you can tell a fact (and all writing boils time off to that) in such natty way that the reader feels he knows you, then on your toes are successful.

In the position of our ancient forebears, astonishment are closer to the spiritualist than the scribe. It's binding too bad it doesn't remunerate better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review be beaten Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Suggest and the Calling of excellent Wildland, p.

718.

New York Age Book Review, June 28, 1987, John Tallmadge, review of Letters from Side Lake: A Version of Life in the Ad northerly Woods; February 12, 1995; Sep 15, 2002, Stewart O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: To the Penman, Fighting Fire Is God's Awl, Both Now and Long Ago," p. 22.

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

66.

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

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

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

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

ONLINE

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

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