Midway through his essay about “The Old System” by Saul Bellow, Peter Orner mentions the “kitchen table story.” This is Orner’s “preferred species of story,” he writes, “where a single, motionless ...

Every seasoned author has overarching themes that he or she explores, to success or failure, across a series of books. Mediocrity and defeat — twin afflictions that beset the narrators in Peter ...

Peter Orner keeps a small writing studio inside an old hotel on the Connecticut River, where Vermont meets New Hampshire. That room, to put this kindly, is often a landfill, a mess, though not without ...

April 22, 2026 • In "The Tea Ceremony" by Gina Berriault, protagonist, Delia, struggles with wanting beautiful things. Her family's hardscrabble life doesn't measure up. She isn't the most beautiful ...

In Norwich author Peter Orner’s new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, the titular character is Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, an aspiring stage and screen actress, shoplifter, and devotee of ...

Peter Orner’s new book, “Still No Word From You: Notes in the Margin,” blends memoir and essays to examine the power of reading and literature to shape our lives. A Guggenheim Fellow, Orner has ...