July 31st at 6PM

Peter will read short selections from his novel-in-manuscript,  The Violent Flow of Becoming the story of a young queer woman’s coming of age in a city-Montreal/Montréal of the 1970s & 1980s–passionately committed to binaries. He’ll also talk about his work as a freelance editor and story coach. Peter has held a McConnell Fellowship in International Relations at McGill and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He’s been a Fellow of The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Peter lives in Brooklin and Cambridge with his wife Basha Burwell and their son Henry Behrens.

Reviews:

CARRY ME

NPR’s Best Reads of 2016

Winner, The Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature  

“another meditation on history and destiny . . . that make[s] the past feel stunningly close at hand.” —Megan O’Grady, Vogue

“Behrens captures his narrator’s naïveté and the casual anti-Semitism of the times with great skill and intelligence . . . as true an observation about human nature as there is.” —Dennis Bock, The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, March 20, 2016)

 THE LAW OF DREAMS

Winner, The Governor-General’s Literary Award 2006   

“. . .  one of those rare books that comes along from time to time that makes you feel that you are in the presence of greatness: a gifted storyteller with a truly compelling story to tell . . . ” Sunday Independent (Dublin)

“Absorbing, unsparing and beautifully written…a masterly novel” The New York Times Book Review

THE O’BRIENS

“World War II hovers in this novel’s path like flak and rips the lives of the novel’s characters to shreds…The O’Briens is a major accomplishment.” —New York Times Book Review (3/25/12)

“A distinctly 20th century family epic . . . pitch-perfect.”—National Post

“Epic in its scope….lifetimes unfold in its pages..a reminder of just how vital, brutal, and pervasive love is.” The Huffington Post

“Time and time again, Behrens proves himself a first-rate seanchaí, the Irish term for a storyteller” —James McElroy, The Washington Post