Peter Behrens, born in Montreal, Canada, in 1954. B.A. from Concordia University, Montreal. Novelist and screenwriter in Brooklin, Maine.
Writer-in-Residence (1 September 2012 – 31 January 2013)
NOVEL: “REFUGEE DREAMS”
I completed 300 pages in manuscript of a novel during the five months I spent at NIAS. The (working title) of the novel is “Refugee Dreams”. The research I did here focused on the history of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; the history of Frankfurt in the Weimar and Nazi periods; and the life of Carl von Weinberg, a Jewish director of I.G. Farben. NIAS contributed to my career prospects by allowing me the time, space, European context, and the serious and scholarly milieu to undertake the huge project of a novel dealing with European history.