- Peter Gadol
Peter Gadol is an American author. Gadol grew up in Westfield,
New Jersey and received an A.B. "magna cum laude" in English and American Literature fromHarvard College in 1986. While at Harvard, he studied writing withSeamus Heaney , wrote a thesis onWallace Stevens under the supervision ofHelen Vendler , edited the literary magazine "The Harvard Advocate ", and was for two years a fiction intern at "The Atlantic ".Gadol is the author of five books. His debut novel, "Coyote", published by Crown in 1990, was hailed by "The
Los Angeles Times " as “the work of an energetic mind, one seemingly unfettered by fashionable norms,” and his second novel, "The Mystery Roast" (Crown, 1993), was described by "The Washington Post " as “a savory spoof of trends, but ultimately...a love story involving secrets and dreams, anxieties about fulfillment and intimacy and theMuses that inspire us nonetheless.”"Closer to the Sun", published by Picador USA in 1996, was inspired by Gadol’s move to
Los Angeles and tells the story of a young couple who, after having lost their home in acanyon wildfire, enlist the help of a drifter to rebuild the house themselves, the drifter himself overcoming the loss of a lover toAIDS .In "The Long Rain" (Picador USA, 1997), Gadol returned to
California , this timewine country, to write a literary thriller about a lawyer who defends a man wrongly accused of committing a crime the lawyer himself committed. The novel was translated into several languages, nominated for a prize from PEN West, and is currently in film development by Constantin Films of Germany.His most recent novel, "Light at Dusk" (Picador USA, 2000), is set in the
Paris of a slightly near-future in which thefar right has ascended andwhite power skinhead gang s freely roam the streets. The daylight abduction of a Lebanese boy causes a young American ex-diplomat to re-enter the morally questionable world he abandoned in order to find the child. The "LA Weekly " applauded the novel for its “elegant, but mannered prose; tight, suspenseful plotting; moody Parisian setting; fearlessly high-modernist concerns,” and claimed the novel “will not look out of place slouching on the shelf somewhere betweenJoseph Conrad andGraham Greene .”Currently Gadol is writing an epic novel about twentieth-century design titled "American Modern". The first chapter, set at the
Bauhaus on its last day inBerlin 1933, was published in "Black Clock " in March 2004. His short fiction has appeared in "Story" and "Tin House ", and he has taught atUCLA and theCalifornia Institute of the Arts . He is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate Writing Program atOtis College of Art and Design , Los Angeles.
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