Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) was an American novelist and naturalist. Born in New York City, he studied at Yale University and was a co-founder of The Paris Review in 1953 while in Paris, where he also worked as a CIA agent—a fact he later revealed. He was an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and a deeply committed environmentalist and political activist. Matthiessen's works span fiction and non-fiction, including the acclaimed non-fiction The Snow Leopard (1978, National Book Award winner) and the novels At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) and the Watson trilogy. Shadow Country (2008), a complete revision of his Watson trilogy into a single massive novel, won the National Book Award for Fiction. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and died on April 5, 2014, at age eighty-six.