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In addition to Maps
of the Imagination:

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The Writer as
Cartographer, Peter Turchi

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is the author of
Suburban Journals:

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The Sketchbooks, Drawings,
and Prints of Charles Ritchie,

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in collaboration with the
artist, a novel, The Girls Next

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Door, a collection
of stories, Magician,

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and The Pirate Prince,
co-written with Cape Cod

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treasure hunter, Barry Clifford.

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He's also co-edited
with Andrea Barrett,

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The Story Behind The Story: 26
Stories by Contemporary Writers

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and How They Work, and
with Charles Baxter,

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Bringing the Devil to His
Knees: The Craft of Fiction

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and the Writing Life.

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His stories have appeared in
Ploughshares, Story, the Alaska

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Quarterly Review,
among other journals.

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He's received fellowships
from the National Endowment

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for the Humanities and the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial

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Foundation.

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And since 1993, has
taught fiction in

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and directed the MFA program
for writers at Warren Wilson

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College.

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He received his MFA from the
University of Arizona in 1985.

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Peter Turchi is among
today's most astute observers

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of a craft of creative writing.

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In a minute or two, you will
learn this for yourself.

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What you won't learn unless
you've already encountered

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Pete's creative
work is the mastery

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with which he applies
this keen understanding

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to his own fiction.

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Last night, I reread
his story, "Mesa Verde"

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and noticed how it is held up
by its own marvelously rigorous

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geometry.

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Still, we do not see
this scaffolding.

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What we see is a man
holding on to an old regret,

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an awful thing he said a long
time ago to a fragile girl who

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did not deserve his scorn.

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The story is a map of a man's
life, a funny and aching

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chronicle of adolescence.

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Yet Pete made it look
all effortless, as if

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the story had, in fact,
no structure at all.

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It's just a tale, told to
you with horrible honesty,

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by a likable flawed friend.

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Lately, I find myself returning
again and again to that quote

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by Vincent van Gogh,
"let us try to master

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the mysteries of technique
to such an extent

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that people are
deceived by it and will

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swear by all that is holy
that we have no technique.

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Let our work be so savant that
it seems naive and does not

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stink of our sapience."

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Pete is a teacher of technique,
a leading thinker of technique,

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a master of technique.

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Perhaps the best thing I can say
about his body of work though,

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is that reading his stories,
you'd never know it.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Peter Turchi.

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