PETERS, Shawn Francis 1966-

PERSONAL:

Born November 2, 1966, in Baltimore, MD; son of Eugene G. (an engineer) and Frances (a homemaker; maiden name, Mentrek) Peters; married Susan M. Crawford (an attorney), May 27, 2000; children: Margaret Karen. Education: Rutgers University, B.A. (with highest honors), 1988; University of New Hampshire, M.A. (English), 1991; University of Iowa, M.A. (American studies), 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Home—1306 Eberhardt Ct., Madison, WI 53715. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

W. H. Freeman (publisher), assistant project editor for Scientific American Books, 1988-89; New Hampshire Premier, political reporter, 1989-92; freelance journalist and editor, Des Moines, IA, 1995-96; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, manager of grants and exhibition funds, 1996-97; University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI, student services coordinator for School of Journalism and Mass Communication, 1997-2001; freelance journalist, 2001—. University of New Hampshire, instructor, 1991-92; writing instructor for summer programs at Amherst College and University of Massachusetts—Amherst, 1991-95.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Scribes Book Award, American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects, and Outstanding Achievement Award, Wisconsin Library Association, both 2001, and Pulitzer Prize nomination, history category, all for Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution.

WRITINGS:

Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2000.

Defending the Faith: The Yoder Case and the First Amendment, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Vietnam Generation and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

SIDELIGHTS:

Shawn Francis Peters told CA: "I was drawn to writing about law after reading Anthony Lewis's Gideon's Trumpet and Richard Kluger's Simple Justice in the early 1990s. Those two classic works struck a chord with me because they examined relatively complex legal issues in an unusual way. Instead of providing dry analyses of judicial opinions, they focused on the struggles of unheralded people who battled for their rights in the courts. As a graduate student in nonfiction writing at the University of New Hampshire, I decided that I wanted to produce similarly engaging and accessible narratives—works that explored the genesis and development of significant legal cases primarily by telling the stories of the litigants.

"My first book, Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution, provided the first comprehensive account of the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States during the World War II era and the victims' landmark campaign in the courts to secure judicial protections for their civil liberties. In Judging, I tried to weave together accounts of the Witnesses' suffering with analysis of the hundreds of cases they brought before state and federal courts in the early and mid-1940s. My second book also deals with religion and law, although its scope is somewhat narrower than that of my first work. Defending the Faith: The Yoder Case and the First Amendment focuses on a single landmark religious liberty case involving the Old Order Amish in Wisconsin. It too combines narrative with more traditional scholarly analysis.

"In both of my books, I've attempted to satisfy the interests of both scholars and general readers. Because of my background in journalism, my writing style is relatively straightforward; I've tried at all costs to avoid the jargon and tangled sentence structure that mars so much academic writing. At the same time, I haven't shied away from assessing complex jurisprudential issues. My books also reflect my interest in examining the lives of people who exist on the fringes of American culture. Folks like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Amish have largely rejected mainstream life, yet their interactions with our legal system have produced landmark judicial opinions that benefit everyone. If there's a theme to my work, it lies in exploring that paradox.

"I always encourage aspiring writers to become obsessive readers. One of the best ways to learn how to write is by constantly reading the work of people who seem to have mastered the craft. I also counsel patience. It takes a long time—as well as a good deal of luck—to build even a modestly successful career as a writer."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 2001, Merlin Owen Newton, review of Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution, p. 594.

Journal of American History, September, 2001, Charles R. Epp, review of Judging Jehovah's Witnesses, p. 702.

Journal of Church and State, winter, 2002, Chuck E. Smith, review of Judging Jehovah's Witnesses, p. 166.

Library Journal, April 1, 2000, Sandra Collins, review of Judging Jehovah's Witnesses, p. 107.