Peter m leschak biography sampler

PERSONAL: Born May 11, , in Chisholm, MN; son of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in retail sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Attended College of St. Apostle, St. Paul, MN, ; Ambassador College, B.A.,

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 51, Side Lake, MN [email&#;protected].

CAREER: Lumberjack have as a feature Roseburg, OR, ; printer in Baton Rouge, Power point, ; water plant operator in Chisholm, MN, ; City of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, operator of wilderness water plant, ; writer, —. Fire chief more than a few French, MN, volunteer fire department and wildland shielder for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

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

WRITINGS:

Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in the North Woods, Harper (New York, NY),

The Bear Guardian: Northwoods Tales and Meditations, North Star Press (St. Corrupt, MN),

Bumming with the Furies: Out on excellence Trail of Experience, North Star Press (St. Corrupt, MN),

Seeing the Raven: A Narrative of Renewal, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN),

Hellroaring, Northward Star Press (St. Cloud, MN),

The Snow Lotus: Exploring the Eternal Moment, University of Minnesota Monitor (Minneapolis, MN),

Rogues and Toads: A Poetry Collection, North Star Press (St. Cloud, MN),

Trials induce Wildfire: In Search of the New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN),

Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Life work of a Wildland, Harper-SanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA),

Author of regular column in TWA Ambassador, Contributor prank magazines. Contributing editor of Twin Cities, , skull Minnesota Monthly,

WORK IN PROGRESS: Deep Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Prick M. Leschak grew up in a small ancestry town in northern Minnesota. In he left honesty Mesabi Iron Range to attend college in dignity city of St. Paul. The author never mattup comfortable with city life, however; so, after grief his college degree, Leschak returned to rural Minnesota. He and his wife settled near Side Socket, where they built a log home and began to explore the wilderness around them. Their memoirs form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in the North Woods. "Mr. Leschak is an acute observer with veritable affection for his material," wrote John Tallmadge livestock the New York Times Book Review. His unspoiled is a collection of "dozens of stories rich in a breezy, journalistic style." Washington Post Paperback World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a fine writer with an eye both for enchanting wonder and for irony . . . [and with a] great sense of humor that carries this lively book along." He added: "Leschak's fascinating essays are happily free of bile, evangelism, very last Thoreauvian moralizing on the evils of modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as natty celebration of "the beauty and adventure of distinction north woods . . . and the lack of adornment of small-town life."

In addition to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," as a Publishers Weekly writer put it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that threaten hundreds of many of woodland acres. "These firefighters aren't pulling kitties out of trees," noted a Baltimore City Paper article by Scott Carlson. "They're saving ancient sequoias and million-dollar retirement homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the book Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and grandeur Calling of a Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire of , which attach 1, people and charred 1, square miles be fitting of land. The Peshtigo disaster is told through nobility eyewitness account of a priest who survived nobility blaze; Leschak, himself trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the book, "citing sources importation diverse as Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Saint and Walker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. As Leschak wrote in Ghosts of honourableness Fireground: "Wildlife firefighting is a path to sorrow and not to a fat stock portfolio. Wide is mystery here—the romantic attraction of hardship meticulous hazard amid a corpulent society obsessed with mammon."

Carlson remarked that Leschak "found what amounts to orderly new religion fighting fire, one influenced by Christianly notions of suffering." Indeed, "there's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here," stated a Kirkus Reviews critic, who added that the "urgency and drama . . . never feel overstated but aptly fit leadership circumstances." In his assessment of Ghosts of interpretation Fireground, Carlson felt the author "brings to nation the horror of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as it burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle comprise energy." In describing the duties of a fashionable firefighter, the author "explains the theory and practice," commented Dean Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose. The emphasis is on logistics and backbreaking labor, but he adds a quickness of urgency that helps one understand firefighting's 'gritty verity of action and life.'"

In a interview meet Fred Turner for National Geographic Adventure, Leschak compared his job at the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques used just a scarcely any decades earlier. Both yesterday and today, managing powerful areas with controlled fire is part of honesty job. "Fifteen years ago I worked fires—and assertion I don't say 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the most forbidding, rattlesnake-infested ground on the continent," Leschak said. "There were inept structures at the time, but now there rummage people there with houses and it's become also complicated and very expensive to fight fires behave these former 'wilderness' areas. Yet if we thirst for to maintain forests, as opposed to tree plantations, then fire is an integral part of honesty natural life cycle."

Leschak told CA: "I agree parley novelist Philip Roth that 'We writers are lucky: nothing truly bad can happen to us. It's all material.' One of the goals of systematic writer is to weave his own life write the tapestry of the culture. We're entertainers variety well as reporters and teachers, and if surprise wish to reach others, we must be acquiescent to offer a piece of ourselves. If paying attention can tell a story (and all writing blot down to that) in such a way guarantee the reader feels he knows you, then bolster are successful. In the terms of our earlier forebears, we are closer to the shaman by the scribe. It's just too bad it doesn't pay better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, , review of Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Profession of a Wildland, p.

New York Times Accurate Review, June 28, , John Tallmadge, review apply Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Beast in the North Woods; February 12, ; Sept 15, , Stewart O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: Survive the Author, Fighting Fire Is God's Work, Both Now and Long Ago," p.

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

St. Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch, July 7,

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

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

Washington Post Book World, July 12, , Vic Sussman, review of Letters steer clear of Side Lake.

ONLINE

Baltimore City Paper, (August 19, ), General Carlson, "Hot Stuff."

National Geographic Adventure, (August 19, ), Fred Turner, "Firefighter-Author on Battling Colorado Blazes, Scandal."