Name Levi Peterson | Role Biographer | |
Books The backslider, Juanita Brooks, Aspen Marooney, A Rascal by Nature - A Christia, Night soil | ||
Levi Savage Peterson (born 1933) is a Mormon biographer, essayist and fictionist whose best-known works include a seminal biography of Juanita Brooks, his own autobiography, and his novel The Backslider, "standard for the contemporary Mormon novel". He was born and reared in the Mormon community of Snowflake, Arizona and is an emeritus professor of English at Weber State University. He edited Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from 2004 to 2008.
Peterson's work as a writer centers in "the possibility of wrong behavior"; his works "variously examine the tension between Sainthood as fact and Sainthood as aspiration, between belief and doubt, and between expected blessings and the traumas of reality." Similarly, he taught his writing students to "Write from the other side of your inhibitions".