Peter matthiessen michael rockefeller biography

American novelist

For the clockmaker, see Peter Mathiesen.

Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent.^[1] A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction (The Snow Leopard, 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and fiction (Shadow Country, 2008).^[2] He was also a prominent environmental activist.

Matthiessen's nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably The Snow Leopard (1978) and American Indian issues and history, such as a detailed and controversial study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983).

His fiction was adapted for film: the early story "Travelin' Man" was made into The Young One (1960) by Luis Buñuel^[3] and the novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) into the 1991 film of the same name.