Native Washingtonian Quintin Peterson is a retired District of Columbia police officer who served the public for three decades. He also is an artist and critically acclaimed author of crime fiction.
As a junior high school student, he attended the Corcoran School of Art on a scholarship. While still in high school, he was honored with the University of Wisconsin's Science Fiction Writing Award, the National Council of Teachers of English Writing Award, and the Wisconsin Junior Academy's Writing Achievement Award.
As an undergraduate communications major at the University of Wisconsin, he wrote and performed in two plays for stage and videotape and received a Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation grant for his play project, Change. A National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship and a play-writing grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities followed. Subsequently, two of his radio plays were aired on WPFW-FM Pacifica Radio as productions of the Minority Arts Ensemble's Radio Drama Workshop '79.
Mr. Peterson retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in April of 2010. He was assigned to the Office of Public Information as a media liaison officer. He also was a liaison between the department and members of the motion picture and television industries, acting as a script consultant and technical adviser on films including No Way Out, The Pelican Brief, In the Line of Fire, Absolute Power, Kiss the Girls, Naked Gun 2½, Minority Report, Enemy of the State, True Lies, National Treasure I and II, State of Play, The X-Files, Bones, Lie to Me, and Season 6 of 24. In December of 2010, he became an employee of the Folger Shakespeare Library's Department of Safety and Security.
He is the author of a book of poetry, Nativity, two novels, SIN and The Wages of SIN, and two novellas, Guarding Shakespeare and The Voynich Gambit, noir stories about plots to heist priceless artifacts from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He is a contributor to the crime fiction anthology D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos; the John L. French edited crime fiction anthology, Bad Cop, No Donut: Tales of Police Behaving Badly; the anthology From Shadows and Nightmares, edited by Amber L. Campbell; the noir anthology To Hell in a Fast Car, edited by John L. French; the anthology Felons, Flames and Ambulance Rides, edited by Marilyn Olsen; and the noir anthology to benefit the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), Explosions: Stories of Our Landmined World, edited by Scott Bradley. He also has penned several Kindle Edition and BN.com Nook Books e-stories and his work is featured in Issue 3 of the British horror magazine SANITARIUM and Issues 2 and 4 of eNoir magazine (now known as Heater magazine). Also, Mr. Peterson is an Active Member of Mystery Writers of America and is on the Board of Directors of its Mid-Atlantic Chapter, and is also a member of Police Writers, International Thriller Writers, and the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA). Peterson received PSWA Writing Awards in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019.
OF NOTE: On Friday, February 5, 2016, from 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm, James DeVita joined Quintin Peterson in the Free Folger Friday Event, Crime Writers on Shakespeare.
They read from their Shakespeare-inspired novels (Devita's A WINSOME MURDER and Peterson's GUARDING SHAKESPEARE) on the stage of the Folger Theatre (http://www.folger.edu/) and then answered questions from the program's moderator, Katherine Pitt, Folger Humanities Program Assistant, as well as questions from a lively audience. Afterward, they retired to the Gail Paster Reading Room to sign copies of their books.
The session was recorded for the Folger Archives. EVENT AUDIO: http://tinyurl.com/z9hlh98
Guarding Shakespeare, the first work of fiction that is actually about the Folger Shakespeare Library, and its sequel The Voynich Gambit (the 2nd work about the library) are also part of the Folger Special Collection, consisting of fictional representations of the Folger Library. The Special Collection also contains The School of Night by Louis Bayard and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. (FOR COMPLETE LISTING OF THE FOLGER SPECIAL COLLECTION GO TO: http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/List_of_fictional_representations_of_the_Folger)
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