Richard Wayne Peck was born on April 5, 1934, in Illinois. His mother was a Wesleyan University graduate, and his father owned a service station. He attended elementary and high school in Decatur, Illinois.
After college, he was drafted into the US Army as a chaplain's assistant and spent two years serving in Stuttgart, Germany. In a 2003 interview he commented, "I think your view of the world goes on—for the rest of your life—as the world you saw as you emerged into it as an adult."[5]
Peck worked as a high school teacher, but much to his dismay, was transferred to a junior high school to teach English. After a while, he decided to cut his career short and write. However, these observations about junior high school students proved to be inspiring material for his books. He said, "Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I was hired to teach them."[6]
He left teaching in 1971 to write his first novel, Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1972, in which "A teenage girl struggles to understand her place within her family and in the world." He wrote a book each year since then totaling 41 books in 41 years.
In a 2001 profile, family friend Marc Talbert described Peck as a person "who is fastidious about what he allows others to know about himself. He knew, respected, and honored personal boundaries in ways that are refreshing for someone who grew up in the sixties and seventies, when every little personal thing was fair game."[7] However, when The Best Man was published in 2016, Peck spoke about marriage equality in the United States from his perspective as a gay man who had grown up in a time when homosexuality was punishable by law.[8]
He lived in New York and divided his time between writing and traveling. Peck died in New York City in May 2018 at age 84.[9]
Quotes
"The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you." — Richard Peck, at a PEN panel in New York City, February 8, 2010[citation needed]
"Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I had been hired to teach them," Peck said in a speech published in Arkansas Libraries. "They taught me that a novel must entertain first before it can be anything else. I learned that there is no such thing as a 'grade reading level'; a young person's 'reading level' and attention span will rise and fall according to his degree of interest. I learned that if you do not have a happy ending for the young, you had better do some fast talking."[10]
"You never write about yourself; you just always wind up having written about yourself." — October 10, 2013, to a library full of 4th graders in Pleasanton, California[citation needed]
Peck wrote exclusively on a typewriter, described here in 'Publishers Weekly':
When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader.
Peck refused to embrace new technology, instead choosing to type his material on a typewriter.
2004: Jeremiah Ludington Memorial Award, from the Educational Paperback Association, for "significant contribution to the educational paperback business"[16]
^ abBefore 1988 the ALA awards did not distinguish "children's" literature—the Newbery book award and Wilder career award—from that for "young adults". Peck won the second biennial "Young Adult Services Division/School Library Journal Author Achievement Award", and the last one in that it was renamed and made annual that year. "1990 Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner". YALSA. ALA. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
^ abcdefgThe lifetime Edwards Award recognizes a specified body of work for "helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world." The 1990 panel cited six of Peck's books published from 1976 to 1985: Are You in the House Alone?, The Ghost Belonged to Me, Ghosts I Have Been, Father Figure, Secrets of the Shopping Mall, and Remembering the Good Times.
The librarians noted, "Through sharp wit and strong storytelling, Richard Peck's novels encourage readers to carefully examine the world around them as well as to seek possibilities beyond immediate view."
^ abcdThe Blossom Culp series comprises four novels published 1975 to 1986: The Ghost Belonged to Me, Ghosts I Have Been, The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp, and Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death.
See ISFDB.
References
^"Richard Peck". Random House [publisher]. Retrieved 2006-12-02.
^Sutton, Roger (interviewer) (2016-07-20). Richard Peck Talks with Roger (Video Edition). The Horn Book Magazine. Quote begins at 29:10. Retrieved 2021-07-01. Sutton: "Did you find, as a gay person, that you brought a particular perspective to the story?" Peck: "I think I did, because when I was coming into the world as an adult, long ago, you could go to prison for that. And now my friends are younger than I am, and they came into a world in which you could die of AIDS because of that. And these were our first views of who we were and what we were taught to be. And now, in the 21st century, something wonderful has happened."
^Greasley, Philip (2016). Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume 2: Dimensions of the Midwestern Literary Imagination. Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 153. ISBN978-0253021045.
Gallo, Donald R. and Wendy J. Glenn. Richard Peck: The Past is Paramount. 2nd ed. revised. Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2008. ISBN0810863944. (Google Books selection)
Sommers, Michael A. Richard Peck (Library of author biographies). New York: Rosen Pub. Group. 2004. ISBN0823940187
