Richard Peck '56 on Faculty for Society of Children's Book Writers Conference

July 8, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — Richard Peck, the 1956 graduate of DePauw University who has been called "America's best living author for young adults," will serve on the faculty for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators 38th Annual Summer Conference. The event will take place August 7-10 in Los Angeles.

To learn more, visit the conference's Web site.

Richard Peck is the first writer for young readers to receive a National Humanities Medal. A former teacher, he published his first novel in 1972. Are You In The House Alone? won the 1978 Edgar Allan Poe Award. His A Year Down Yonder won the Newbery Gold Medal in 2001. A Long Way From Chicago was a National Book Award finalist as was his Civil War novel, The River Between Us. His latest book, A Season of Gifts, is scheduled to be released in September.

"He has established a chair in creative writing for his alma mater, DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana," notes the conference. "DePauw granted him an honorary doctorate of letters in 1999. Though he never wrote a line of fiction until he was thirty-seven years old, his first works to find acceptance were the sermons he ghost-wrote for chaplains when he was a soldier in Cold War Germany."

After winning the Newbery Medal, Peck told DePauw.edu that the University [Download Audio: "Peck on DePauw" 603KB] "made a writer out of me. It warned me never to show my rough draft to anybody. That helps. I write each of my books six times because I have to, and it's the sixth version my editor sees and nothing before that. I learned that from DePauw professors."

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