About the Writer
I got my start as a writer when, as a kid of 12, my parents gave me a toy printing press for Christmas. That winter, the stories I wrote—the subjects now long forgotten—I set in rubber type, inked and printed on paper that came with the rotary press.
I wrote for student newspapers in high school and college, then followed those experiences into the working world by writing and editing membership publications for state Farm Bureaus in Wisconsin, Michigan and Kansas. After I left an executive position with the Colorado Farm Bureau in 1979, I joined the ranks of newspaper journalists as a reporter for the Douglas County News-Press in Castle Rock, Colorado. From there, I took on reporting and editing positions with weekly, semi-weekly and daily newspapers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee.
I left daily journalism to become a graduate student in journalism and mass communications at the University of Tennessee/Knoxville—the world’s oldest graduate student, at least in my class. It was here that I began collecting stories, and I put a number of them into novels and short stories that I set in the Great Smoky Mountains. Several of my shorter works saw print in literary and popular culture journals.
At UT, I studied creative writing under novelists Wilma Dykeman and Allen Wier. I’ve also been a participant in writing workshops conducted by novelists Lee Smith and Robert Morgan, thriller writer David Morrell, and mystery writers Jeremiah Healy, William Kent Krueger and Anne Perry.
I am a member of Tuesdays with Story, a writers’ group in Madison, Wisconsin; the Knoxville (Tennessee) Writers Guild; and the Mystery Writers of America. I also have taken part in the Columbus (Ohio) Writers Conference, the Lost State Writers Conference (Greeneville, Tennessee), Gardenia Press’ First Novel Fest (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), the North Carolina Writers Network Fall Conference (Raleigh, North Carolina), and the University of Wisconsin’s Writers Institute (Madison, Wisconsin). Annually, I attend Love Is Murder, a mystery writers’ conference in Chicago, and less frequently the Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave, a mystery writers conference in Manhattan, Kansas.
My stories have appeared in The Mid-Atlantic Almanack; in Entelechy; in Migrants & Stowaways, an anthology published by the Knoxville Writers Guild; and in CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, an anthology published by Mercer University Press.
Pennant Bravo published my short story “The Christmas Gift” in its December 2004 issue and “Bump and the Stranger” in its January 2005 issue. “End Time,” which appeared in the Mercer anthology, won honors in the 2004 Sugar River short story contest, and “Bump and the Stranger” won honors in the 2004 Wisconsin Regional Writers Association’s Jade Ring contest.
My short stories “Dead Pool” and “Big Dam Foolishness” won honors in the Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave’s 2004 writing contest, and the Conclave published them in its 2005 anthology, Manhattan Mysteries. The Wisconsin Regional Writer selected my short story, “Hard Day on the Road,” a winner in its Spring 2005 flash fiction contest. WRW published the story in its Fall 2005 issue. TwilightTales.com, an online fiction magazine, published my short story “Spirited Solution” in one of its 2006 editions.
I’ve been a columnist for the Wisconsin Regional Writer, a publication of the WRWA, and a frequent contributor to Creativity Connection, a University of Wisconsin publication for writers.
I have taught speech, English and theater in Wisconsin high schools, and public relations and editing at the University of Tennessee. For a number of years after I returned to Wisconsin, I worked as a substitute teacher in the Janesville and Milton, Wisconsin, school systems when I wasn’t at my computer.
One last factoid, I’m a pilot—single- and multi-engine rated—and a member of the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association.
© Jerry Peterson.
