Steven L. Peck

Steven L. Peck is a Utah native from Moab, Utah, and currently lives in Pleasant Grove. He is an ecology professor at Brigham Young University and, in that capacity, has published over fifty scientific articles in the fields of insect evolutionary ecology, ecological mathematics, and philosophy of biology. As a writer, his work draws on the rhizomatic connections between his love of the land and its ecology. His fiction explores relationships with science, religion, evolution, consciousness, and the ways humans interact with the other inhabitants of this planet.

Almost all of his works are set in Utah, as was his recent novel, The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals. It was a semi-finalist for the Big Moose Prize sponsored by Black Lawrence Press. The book also received a starred review at Publishers Weekly, and was short-listed for the Grand Prize in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for works published by small, independent, and academic presses. The novel set in the La Sal mountains of Southeastern Utah near Moab, and offers a meditation on ecology, land, place, and the madness of unchecked greed.

Peck’s, Scholar of Moab, Torrey House Press, is a work of magical realism that takes place in Moab and Vienna, Austria. The book is a dark comedy that flits among ranching, academics, and theories of mind.

Peck is a two-time winner of the Association of Mormon Letters Novel Award (The Scholar of Moab, 2011, Torrey House Press; Gilda Trillim, John Hunt Publishing—Roundfire Books, 2017), and once for short story (Two-Dog Dose, Dialogue 2014). He has published two short story collections and two essay collections on religion and science. His poetry has appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Flyway, New Myths, Pedestal Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Red Rock Review, Whitefish Review, and other places. His poetry collection, Incorrect Astronomy, is published by Aldrich Press.