by Steven Peck
In the opening of my novel, The Scholar of Moab, the narrator says, “I Hyrum having been born of goodly parents am from Moab. This must be distinctly understood if any sense is to be made of any of this my Dickensian life.” Such might be said of me. I was framed in the Redrock Country of southeastern Utah both in terms of my becoming a scientist and a writer. Most of my novels and many of short stories take place in the environs of that area. I want to explore how science, nature, and literature have become one in my work as both an evolutionary biologist and a novelist and short story writer. I often tell my students that there is as much truth in fiction as there is in science. In this talk, I will make the case for this claim.