Award-Winning Author and Teacher of Fiction Writing

Lecture Theme: The Law of Dreams

Behrens is a novelist, essayist, and screen writer. His first novel, The Law of Dreams, is widely acclaimed, and was awarded Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 2006. The book also was nominated for the International Impac Literature Prize.

Peter Behrens' second novel THE O'BRIENS was published in July 2011 by House of Anansi Press in Canada, and January 2012 by Pantheon Books in the United States. Behrens' first novel THE LAW OF DREAMS won the Governor-General's Award, Canada's most prestigious book prize, and has been published in nine languages. His collection of short stories, NIGHT DRIVING was published in 1987. Stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Brick, Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Essays, and many anthologies. Behrens is a native of Montreal and was educated at Lower Canada College, Concordia University, and McGill. He has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University, and was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He lives in Maine and Texas.