2001 Newbery Award Winner
Richard Peck
ABOUT RICHARD PECK
Richard Peck was born on April 5, 1934 in Decatur, Illinois. That makes him 83. He's currently in New York City where he has lived for more than 30 years.
He was raised in a home where he was read to often and he developed a love of books and reading early.
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To this day, he writes using an electric typewriter. He always writes six drafts and doesn't show anything before that sixth to his editor.
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He's written over 30 books. In the book Presenting Richard Peck, Don Gallo quoted Peck's answer to a question regarding his routine as a writer:
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"These days I get up in the morning; I get dressed; I go out and drink coffee in public, walk around the block, and come back and pretend that I have arrived at my office. One of the great advantages of writing for yourself is that you don't have to commute. But once you're a writer, you go out and pretend to be a commuter. Ive heard of weirder routines than that, but. . . We all have our idiosyncrasies and it's all better than alcohol." (p. 22)
Richard Peck is a 1956 graduate of DePauw University. This photo was retrieved from an October 2016 article in DePauw's newspaper citing a New York Times Feature on Peck. Click HERE to read DePauw's article.
In grade school when I was reading for myself, Robert Benchley was my author-of-choice. Where I found his essays I can't imagine. But they made me long to be a confused bachelor who lived in New York and dressed for dinner. That he was confused by alcohol got past me, which only proves that reading can never corrupt a child.
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But more profoundly, Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi was the book that really changed my life. It didn't make me want to be a riverboat pilot; it made me want to be a writer. It even gave a kind of fugitive permission. Mark Twain could make poetry out of the prosaic midsection of America where I was growing up. From Mark Twain I learned that humor is anger sent to finishing school. I got a career of my own out of that.
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~Richard Peck from The Book that Changed My Life
