Peter Christopher's New York Times Book Review (Just Got Our Copy!)

Here it is! The Sunday print edition of The New York Times with a review of Peter Christopher’s collected stories, Campfires of the Dead and the Living.

Peter’s widow, Carolyn, and I have been working on this book project for three years (with immense help from Sam Moss, Hanna Guido, Mike Corrao, Megan Wilt, and Matthew Revert), and we are so thrilled that Peter’s work is finding readers. 

Peter’s writing means the world to me and has guided me for many years. I wanted to share a little about my personal experience with Peter’s work, and how 11:11 Press was fortunate enough to bring it back into the world.

I first read Peter Christopher in an obscure literary journal, Cutthroat, which I (quite randomly) came across in a university library in Michigan. It was a piece called Ghostville and I can still remember exactly where I was sitting and how it made me feel. The power of each sentence moving the story forward one heartbreaking line at a time. Every sentence cracked me open, exploring all the ways one can lose and discover themselves through language. This is what I had been looking for. This is what I am trying to do, I thought, and here’s this Christopher guy who’s doing it better than me despite my best efforts. I flipped to the back of the journal where the contributor bios were and read that Peter was a professor at Georgia Southern University. I sat back and considered my options. I could stay in Michigan where I was skipping class to work on my novel and maybe graduate, or I could transfer to Georgia Southern, learn how to do this writing thing the right way from Peter, and finish my book with his guidance. I left the library with a spark in my chest and newfound confidence because this writer had already changed my life. It felt like an answer to a prayer I had been sending out since I began writing lyrics as a teenager in heavy metal bands: to go deep within the self and report back with radical strength and honesty. Peter was going to be my teacher, I thought. My writing guru. All I needed was to figure out how to transfer to Georgia Southern, knock on Peter Christopher’s office door, and let him know how serious of a student I was. 

I got back to my campus apartment and looked into how to transfer schools: Everything seemed within reach. And then I began searching for Professor Christopher’s email to let him know I was coming. When the search results came back the top result was his obituary. I had come one year too late. 

I did transfer to another school, the University of Washington in Seattle, but I took Peter’s words with me wherever I went. Even though I never met Peter in person, I was able to become his student through the writing he left behind, and I began guiding other writers to his work so they too could learn. 

Since Campfires of the Dead was too expensive to buy on the used market, I ended up scanning my copy of the book and sent it to authors I was working with who were interested in writing better sentences. In the fall of 2019, I sent a copy to Sam Moss, one of the editors at 11:11, and told him I had also emailed a copy to the author he was working with. The ensuing conversation went a little like this: 

‘This book is good, like, really good, why have I never heard of it?’ 

‘It’s been out of print since 1989 and Peter passed away in 2008. It was the only book he published.’

’Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get it back in print?’ 

A few days later Sam and I were talking and, I think to his surprise, I followed through with it: it took a bit of googling but I found Peter’s wife: Carolyn.  

I’m sure that email, eleven years after Pete’s passing, came completely out of the blue. Carolyn and I spoke on the phone and, after a little back and forth (I’m sure Carolyn wanted to make sure Peter’s work would be in good hands) she granted 11:11 Press the rights to republish Campfires of the Dead. During these conversations, it came out that Peter also had an unpublished short story collection The Living, and a novel, Feral Angels, which he had finished a couple of days before he passed. It turned out that Ghostville, the first story of Peter’s that I read, was an excerpt from this novel.

In that moment my consciousness traveled back to the library in Michigan, everything that had passed and everywhere Peter’s words have traveled with me: the joy and excitement I felt when first reading Peter’s work, the prospect of transferring schools, and then learning of Peter’s unfortunate passing. The struggles I had as an undergrad, escaping Michigan to search for a writing career in Seattle, then Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

More than just good sentences, Peter taught me to live centered in my true self and to write from that innermost place, a place that I had been running away from for so long. Understanding that self-inside-the-self is the way we can meaningfully connect with one another, to realize this struggle inside of ourselves and others, and know that each of us is living each day, on top of all the other days we’ve lived, as best we can. 

Thank you, Peter, for your guidance. I hope others will discover your writing as I did, and I hope it gives them the same excitement and energy as it did when I first read your work, the same joy and inner peace and confidence it still gives me to this day. 

Thank you, Peter, for sharing your writing with us. May your words live on, brightly, and be the light as we dive inwardly toward our true selves.

<3 Andrew // 25 October 2022

More about Andrew and the other members of 11:11 here