Peter Lourie

Biography

     Peter's adventure books come directly from his travel journals. In order to write a book about a place - its history, geography, people and culture - he likes to experience it for himself.

      As a child, he loved collecting rocks and wandering the countryside of Connecticut. When his parents split up, he, his identical twin brother Jim, and their younger sister Ann moved to Ontario, Canada. In the fourth grade, deep into the Hardy Boys, Peter wanted to be a bush pilot in Canada's Northwest Territories. He also wanted to be an archaeologist, to travel the world and delve into ancient cultures.

      When he graduated from college, Peter studied early human bones with Margaret Leakey in Kenya and observed Colobus monkeys in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. He was all set to become an anthropologist when suddenly, while surveying monkeys in the jungles of Ecuador, Peter heard the mysterious story of an Incan treasure.

      In 1533, seven hundred and fifty tons of Incan gold were buried in a strange and haunting cloud forest in the Andes Mountains. That gold, in fact, is still hidden in a dangerous chain of misty mountains only seventy miles from Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

      It was this fantastic story (audio) that made Peter drop his plans to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology. And for the next five years, he remained in Ecuador to research the story of the Inca gold. Finally he hired three guides (Segundo, Juan and Washington) from the small village of El Triunfo in the cloud forest. He climbed into the high jungle looking for the gold but came back not with riches but with a desire to write an article for Highlights Magazine ("Inca Treasure in the Cloud Forest") and a book (Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon: A Chronicle of an Incan Treasure).

This was the story that turned him into a writer, and he began to write adventure-travel books about many places, rivers, and ancient cultures, both for children and for adults. His journeys have now taken him to remote parts of the world, including the jungles and mountains of Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Peru, and Africa.

A few years ago he realized a boyhood dream when he explored Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, known also as "El Fin del Mundo," or the End of the World. This remote island is located at the southern tip of Patagonia and was named "Land of Fire" by Ferdinand Magellan in 1520. Only seven hundred miles from Antarctica, it is a wild and desolate place, filled with penguins, sea lions, and wild guanaco, a llama-like creature that the natives there depended on for food and clothing.

When he recently returned from the jungles of southern Mexico where he was working on a story about the ancient Maya, Peter admitted that although it is important to read books in preparation for a journey, just as crucial are his observations while traipsing through jungles or following rivers.

"Hearing the roar of howlers and the whine of cicadas in the long, hot jungle afternoons in Chiapas, Mexico, is an important part of my research into the ancient Maya civilization," he says. "The mystery has to come alive!" he says. "Readers should feel, hear and smell a place."

For Peter, research is another word for exploration!

It is Peter's love of mystery and of what he will discover that compels him toward his next adventure. A recent book about an Arctic whale scientist who works with the Inupiaq Eskimos on the North Slope of Alaska (Whaling Season: A Year in the Life of an Arctic Whale Scientist) will be followed by another book (Manatee Scientists) about manatees in West Africa, the Amazon, Mexico and Florida. He has also begun research for an upcoming Houghton Mifflin Scientist in the Field book on polar bears, and this summer Peter is heading back to Lake Turkana, Kenya, to visit the Leakey family.

Peter holds a BA in classics from New York University, an MA in English Literature from the University of Maine, and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. He has taught writing at Columbia College, the University of Vermont, and Middlebury College.

He now makes his living traveling, writing and photographing, and visiting schools to share his adventures with students and teachers.

He and his family live near Middlebury, Vermont.

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