Book Feature: Writers Gone Wild

Title: Writers Gone Wild
Author: Bill Peschel
Publisher: Perigree
ISBN: 978-0-399-53618-2
Pages: 224
Price: $14.99


Synopsis from the author's website:
If you've imagined famous writers to be desk-bound drudges, think again. Writers Gone Wild rips back the (book) covers and reveals the seamy underside of the writing life.

Insightful, intriguing, and irresistibly addictive, Writers Gone Wild reveals such fascinating stories as:

* The night Dashiell Hammett hired a Chinese prostitute to break up S. J. Perelman's marriage (and ran off with his wife).

* Why Sylvia Plath bit Ted Hughes on the cheek.

* Why Ernest Hemingway fought a book critic, a modernist poet, and his war correspondent/wife Martha Gellhorn (but not at the same time).

* The near-fatal trip Katherine Anne Porter took while high on marijuana in Mexico.

* Why women's breasts sent Percy Bysshe Shelley screaming from the room.

* The day Virginia Woolf snuck onto a Royal Navy ship disguised as an Abyssinian prince.

Pull up a chair, turn on good reading light, and discover what your favorite writers were up to while away from their desks. Sometimes, they make the wildest characters of all.


About the Author:
Bill Peschel was born in 1960 in Ohio, and grew up there and in North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in journalism. At The Avalon Hill Game Company in Baltimore, he published a magazine for fantasy role-players and developed computer games. He spent several years as a shipping clerk, bread truck driver, paste-up artist and unsuccessful novelist before returning to journalism as a book reviewer, copy editor and page designer. Currently living in Hershey, Pa., and working for The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, “Writers Gone Wild” (Perigee Books, 2010) is his first book.


Check out the links below to read an excerpt and get further information on this book and author.

http://www.planetpeschel.com/index?/writers_gone_wild/index/

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/living-with-music-a-playlist-by-bill-peschel/