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Todd Robert Petersen

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Dr. Petersen was born in Moses Lake, Washington 24 hours before Jimi Hendrix played the national anthem at Woodstock. After graduating from Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon, he became a film major at the University of Oregon. Through high school and college Petersen worked for the YMCA in Oregon and Washington.

After employing Special Agent Dale Cooper's Tibetan Method of Deductive Thinking, Petersen decided to return to school to pursue the life of a writer/academic.

This took him first to Northern Arizona University, where Dr. Allen Woodman dubbed him "Screaming Todd." At NAU, Screaming Todd started the publication Thin Air, worked for Student Support Services, and took a photograph of the Tonto Drive-In Theater outside of Winslow, Arizona, which spawned a short story of the same name, which appeared later in The Cream City Review and ultimately became the title of his doctoral dissertation.

In 1996 Dr. Petersen earned an MA in English with an emphasis in creative writing from NAU. Near the end of his master's work, Dr. Petersen was accepted into the PhD program in creative writing at Oklahoma State University. This would give him the chance to study with Brian Evenson, who would later teach at Denver University and ultimately at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island.

Evenson's mentorship proved invaluable. In addition to forcing Petersen's reading into the strange lands of Thomas Bernhard, Alphonso Lingis, William Trevor, and Lydia Davis, Evenson lead Petersen down the dark path of critical theory. As a result of this combination, Petersen took his examinations in creative writing and critical theory. His PhD in English was awarded in 2001.

Dr. Petersen came to Cedar City and Southern Utah University in the summer of 2001. His academic interests are narrative theory, semiotics, film, and visual studies. He teaches Composition, Introduction to Literature, Introduction to Imaginative Literature, Film and LIterature, Introduction to Creative Writing, and Intermediate Fiction Writing. Additionally Dr. Petersen teaches advanced seminars and workshops in novel and novella writing, editing, Flannery O'Connor, and visual narratives.

Dr. Petersen has won awards from the Associated Writing Programs, Salt Lake City Weekly, the Sunstone Foundation, and the Utah Arts Council. Petersen was a founding editor of the online satire publication The Sugar Beet, and has written a regular column on Utah culture called "In the Belly of the Whale.". He has served as a grant panelist for Utah Arts Council Literary Arts Grant Panel and for the states of Nevada and Arizona. He is a member of the Utah Artists Roster and holds workshops in schools and other non-profit organizations statewide.

Petersen's story collection Long After Dark was published in february of 2007. He has also published work in Hobart, Dialogue, Weber Studies, Wisconsin Review, Cream City Review, Mid-American Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He has recently completed a novel entitled Twilight of the Gods, and is working on a collection of six interlocking stories called Small World.

He lives a block from campus with his wife Alisa, daughter Zoë, and son Ike.

| Todd Robert Petersen |

Last Update: Sunday, December 30, 2007