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"Peter Rock"


Bashir and Rock get creative with their latest projects

By Kevin Myers on April 19, 2017 03:38 PM

On Thursday, April 20, at 4:30 p.m. in Eliot chapel, the Reed College creative writing faculty Samiya Bashir [2012 - ] and Peter Rock [2001 - ] will read from their latest published works, Field Theories and Spells, respectively. The pair talked about their latest projects and their admiration for each other as colleagues.

Field Theories is Samiya Bashir’s third book of poetry, along with Gospel, and Where the Apple Falls. She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Poet Laureate, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwood Poetry Awards. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, residencies, prizes, and is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer's festival for LGBT writers of African descent. Visit Samiya Bashir Dot Com for multimedia content about Field Theories.

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Prof. Peter Rock Works Backwards to Cast "Spells"

By Lauren Cooper ’16 on September 28, 2015 11:37 AM

Prof. Peter Rock won a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to work on Spells. Norah Hoover

The fragmentary novel Spells has its genesis when Prof. Peter Rock [creative writing 2001-] was  working as a security guard in an art museum, amusing himself by making up stories for pieces in the galleries.

“I entertained myself by trying to make up a story for each photograph, painting and object in the museum,” he explained when he spoke on campus September 25. “However, we guards weren't allowed to write on the job. Bending this rule, I carried a scrap of paper and a little pencil and then, in the minute or so when I was going down the stairway to the next floor, I'd furtively scribble a few words, to remind me of the stories I'd made up in my head. When I got to the break room in the basement, I'd write down as much as I could, in the half hour, and then begin again. Later, I'd go home and work some more on it all."

The Spells project came from a desire to get back to that sense of play in writing, Rock says, “it allowed me to expand what I thought was possible in terms of storytelling.”

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Prof. Peter Rock Wins Guggenheim

By Robin Tovey '97 on May 13, 2014 12:00 PM
Reed College

SPELLBOUND. Creative writing prof Pete Rock wins Guggenheim to write a "fragmentary novel" titled Spells.

Peter Rock, professor of creative writing, has won a Guggenheim Fellowship to support work on his latest project, Spells. Known for the creative freedom they facilitate, Guggenheim awards are granted upon the basis of impressive achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Spells is a fragmentary novel done in collaboration with five photographers. The idea came to Prof. Rock years ago while he was working as a security guard in an art museum. To pass the time, he would invent stories inspired by the artwork he was guarding. Examples of this project are found on his website.

Rock, who has taught creative writing in the English department at Reed since 2001, is the author of six novels, most recently The Shelter Cycle and My Abandonment, and a collection of stories, The Unsettling. His books have been translated into several languages, and his stories have appeared in magazines such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, Epoch, and Ploughshares; they have been anthologized widely. He attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. 

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