Peter Orner is the author of two novels, three short story collections and two books of essays.
13 Facts About Peter Orner
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Peter Orner spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright Grant in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.
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Peter Orner was born in Chicago and grew up in Highland Park, Illinois.
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Peter Orner graduated from the University of Michigan in 1990.
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Peter Orner later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law, and an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
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In 2006, Peter Orner published his first novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, which was set in Namibia, where Peter Orner worked as an English teacher in the 1990s; it won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
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Peter Orner's 2011 novel, Love and Shame and Love received positive reviews and was a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and California Book Award winner.
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Peter Orner's work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and twice won a Pushcart Prize.
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Peter Orner is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
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Peter Orner has taught at San Francisco State University, Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Warren Wilson MFA Program, University of Montana, Washington University in St Louis, Miami University, Bard College, and Charles University in Prague.
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Peter Orner has two younger siblings, William and Rebecca Orner.
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Peter Orner has a long-time association with Camp Nebagamon, an overnight camp at Lake Nebagamon in northern Wisconsin, where he has been a counselor, wilderness trip leader, and village director.
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Peter Orner has worked as human rights observer in Chiapas, Mexico, a cab driver in Iowa City, and a sewer department worker for the city of Highland Park, Illinois, where he once worked side-by-side with Alex Gordon, a Chicago-based journalist and author of College: The Best Five Years of Your Life.