The author of the first biography of Peter Matthiessen discusses the trailblazing novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi who championed Native American rights and advanced the modern environmental movement.

A towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) defies categorization. He co-founded the Paris Review while working undercover for the CIA in postwar Paris, then escaped into a series of expeditions that found him floating through the Amazon to recover a fossil or embedding with a tribe in Netherlands New Guinea. His travels inspired prize-winning novels about Caymanian turtle hunters and outlaws in the Florida Everglades. Meanwhile, his legendary nonfiction ranged from influential nature books like Wildlife in America to advocacy journalism supporting Cesar Chavez and Leonard Peltier. Underlying all these disparate pursuits was Matthiessen’s existential quest to cure his “deep restlessness,” articulated most profoundly in The Snow Leopard, his National Book Award–winning account of a 250-mile wildlife survey across the Himalayas. In True Nature, Lance Richardson reconstructs Matthiessen’s spiritual journey and untangles his many contradictions to depict a remarkable life.

Lance Richardson worked on True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen during his 2023-2024 term as the Janice B. and Milford D. Gerton / Arts and Letters Foundation Fellow at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He will discuss his book with award-winning writer Sam Anderson.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Lance Richardson's first book, House of Nutter: The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named a notable book of 2018 by the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday, Esquire, and the American Library Association. He has received the Hazel Rowley Literary fellowship, a fellowship from the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar fellowship, and residency fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Harry Ransom Center. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont.

Sam Anderson is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, where he has written portraits of writers (Haruki Murakami, Anne Carson, John McPhee), athletes (Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Bill Walton, Phil Jackson), and odd places all over the world, including Mount Rushmore and a Charles Dickens theme park. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and been anthologized multiple times in the Best American series. Anderson is the author of the book Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis.

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In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.