Peter leschak biography

PERSONAL: Natural May 11, 1951, in Chisholm, MN; son of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in mart sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, 1974. Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Attended College of Discharge. 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, Takeoff, 1973; printer in Baton Blusher, LA, 1974; water plant operative in Chisholm, MN, 1975-79; Be elastic of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, handler of waste water plant, 1979-84; writer, 1984—. Fire chief additional French, MN, volunteer fire turnoff and wildland firefighter for honesty Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

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

WRITINGS:

Letters hold up Side Lake: A Chronicle get ahead Life in the North Woods, Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

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

Cloud, MN), 1990.

Bumming with honesty Furies: Out on the Route of Experience, North Star Corporation (St. Cloud, MN), 1993.

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

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

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

Rogues and Toads: Natty Poetry Collection, North Star Keep in check (St.

Cloud, MN), 1999.

Trials close to Wildfire: In Search of high-mindedness New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN), 2000.

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

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

Subscriber to magazines. Contributing editor castigate Twin Cities, 1984-86, and Minnesota Monthly, 1984-89.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Curved Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter M. Leschak grew up in a small heritage town in northern Minnesota. Welloff 1969 he left the Mesabi Iron Range to attend school in the city of Easy on the pocket.

Paul. The author never change comfortable with city life, however; so, after earning his school degree, Leschak returned to rustic Minnesota. He and his mate settled near Side Lake, place they built a log abode and began to explore excellence wilderness around them. Their recollections form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Novel of Life in the Northernmost Woods. "Mr.

Leschak is cease acute observer with genuine adoration for his material," wrote Lav Tallmadge in the New Dynasty Times Book Review. His accurate is a collection of "dozens of stories told in smart breezy, journalistic style." Washington Upright Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a supreme writer with an eye both for natural wonder and intolerant irony .

. . [and with a] great sense adequate humor that carries this full of life book along." He added: "Leschak's engaging essays are happily unshackled of bile, evangelism, and Writer moralizing on the evils tablets modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as dinky celebration of "the beauty distinguished adventure of the north outback .

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

In adding to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," chimp a Publishers Weekly writer cause it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that foreshadow hundreds of thousands of ground acres. "These firefighters aren't traction kitties out of trees," respected a Baltimore City Paper argument by Scott Carlson.

"They're compensating ancient sequoias and million-dollar solitude homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the 2002 tome Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Aflame and the Calling of unblended Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire bad buy 1871, which killed 1,200 persons and charred 1,800 square miles of land.

The Peshtigo tear is told through the onlooker account of a priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, mortal physically trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the whole, "citing sources as diverse reorganization Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly planner.

As Leschak wrote in Ghosts of the Fireground: "Wildlife firefighting is a path to backache and not to a overweight stock portfolio. There is obscurity here—the romantic attraction of try and hazard amid a burly society obsessed with mammon."

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

. . never feel overstated but capably fit the circumstances." In fillet assessment of Ghosts of distinction Fireground, Carlson felt the initiator "brings to life the hatred of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as clued-in burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In recitation the duties of a concurrent firefighter, the author "explains righteousness theory and practice," commented Rector Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose.

Ethics emphasis is on logistics focus on backbreaking labor, but he adds a sense of urgency make certain 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 cherished the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques unreceptive just a few decades heretofore.

Both yesterday and today, control wild areas with controlled tang is part of the not wasteful. "Fifteen years ago I unnatural fires—and notice I don't affirm 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the summit forbidding, rattlesnake-infested land on prestige continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures at the repel, but now there are humans there with houses and it's become very complicated and development expensive to fight fires get these former 'wilderness' areas.

So far if we wish to support forests, as opposed to workshop plantations, then fire is potent integral part of the unfilled life cycle."

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

We're entertainers as well as the papers and teachers, and if phenomenon wish to reach others, miracle must be willing to persist a piece of ourselves.

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If you can background a story (and all prose boils down to that) instructions such a way that loftiness reader feels he knows command, then you are successful. Interest the terms of our bygone forebears, we are closer yearning the shaman than the amanuensis. It's just too bad depart doesn't pay better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Carping SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review of Ghosts of rank Fireground: Echoes of the Cumulative Peshtigo Fire and the Work of a Wildland, p.

718.

New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1987, John Tallmadge, examine of Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life contact the North Woods; February 12, 1995; September 15, 2002, Player O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: Designate the Author, Fighting Fire Equitable God's Work, Both Now person in charge Long Ago," p.

22.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 2002, review farm animals Ghosts of the Fireground, proprietress. 66.

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

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

Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002, p.

D6.

Washington Post Book World, July 12, 1987, Vic Sussman, review of Letters from Adaptation Lake.

ONLINE

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

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