Peter Mountford was born in Washington, DC, in 1976, and grew up there apart from three formative years in Sri Lanka. After earning a degree in international relations from Pitzer College in 1999, he spent two years as the token liberal at a think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. During that time, he lived in Ecuador. When he returned to the US, he quit the think tank and began writing fiction.
In 2006, he earned an MFA from the University of Washington, where he won the Mary Rouevelas… Show more Prize and the David Guterson Award for best creative thesis.
Since then, Peter's short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2008, Conjunctions, Michigan Quarterly Review, Phoebe, and Boston Review, where he won second place in the 2007 contest, judged by George Saunders. His short story "Horizon" was also one of the Distinguished Stories of 2007 in Best American Short Stories 2008 (edited by Salman Rushdie). A writer-in-residence at Seattle Arts and Lectures, and a two-time fellow of Yaddo, Peter won 2010 grants from The Elizabeth George Foundation, and Seattle CityArtist.
His first novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter."
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