Reed Convocation 2024 Speaker
Peter Rock
Professor of Creative Writing
Peter Rock joined the Reed College faculty in 2001, and he is the college's first tenured professor in creative writing. His books include The Night Swimmers, The Unsettling, SPELLS, and My Abandonment, which was made into the 2018 film Leave No Trace.
Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, he has won the Scripter award from USC, an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
At Reed, Rock teaches the writing of prose, both fiction and non-fiction, with special interest in the intersection between the two, economical forms, the fantastic and invisible, animals, friends, ghosts, and linkages of every kind.