2023 Keynote Speaker

Peter Heller

Thursday, March 2, 2023, 7 p.m.

Highland Park High School

Peter Heller is the national best-selling author of The River, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip. Heller has also written the novels Celine, The Painter, The Dog Stars, and The Guide. An award-winning adventure writer and a longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. The Dog Stars, which was lauded as a breakout bestseller, has been published in 22 languages and is optioned for a movie (release date TBD). The Painter was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the prestigious Reading the West Book Award. Heller is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature, Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsango River, and The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammal. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry and fiction and lives in Denver, Colorado. For more information about Mr. Heller and his books, please visit www.peterhellerauthor.com.

Mr. Heller’s books, The Dog Stars, The River, The Guide, and Celine, will be available for purchase on the evening of March 2 during the Keynote Speaker Event and on March 3 in the HPHS Library during workshop presentations.

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