VJ Books Presents William Dietrich!

William Dietrich grew up near Puget Sound in the shadow of Mount Rainier, and like so many writers of the Pacific Northwest, it is geography, a sense of place, and the natural and human environment that flows through his writing. The influence of dramatic landscapes on people infects not only his non-fiction but his novels, set in Antarctica, the Australian Outback, the barbarian fringes of the Roman Empire, and the sands of Egypt. The Pulitzer-winning journalist’s non-fiction has been widely used in university classes and his fiction has been sold into fifteen languages.

Dietrich was born on Sept. 29, 1951 in Tacoma, WA.  He attended Fairhaven College, an experimental liberal arts division of Western Washington University. Interest in writing led him to journalism at Western, and his first job was covering agricultural Skagit County for the Bellingham, WA, Herald. He got his literary start chronicling “Berry-Dairy Days” and other such modest events.

Times assignments provided wonderful opportunities to report from the Arctic and Antarctic and to circle the globe, covering subjects ranging from the military to the environment. In 1987-88 he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and in 1990 was part of a four-person team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He won reporting and study fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Woods Hole Microbiological Institute, and Scripps. His first book, The Final Forest, (1992) grew out of his reporting on the spotted owl and old growth forest debate that convulsed the Pacific Northwest. Northwest Passage (1995) is an environmental and cultural history of the Columbia River inspired by its imperiled salmon runs and epic pioneer past.

Science was probably the most enjoyable and improbable subject Dietrich ever got to cover. A 1994 fellowship to Antarctica and a kick in the pants from cancer (he has fully recovered) prompted the author to take a stab at a lifelong goal of writing a novel by producing the World War II bio-terrorism thriller Ice Reich (1998). Its first draft was finished during a second reporting trip to the white continent aboard an icebreaker: it was literally the first sight of icebergs that inspired him to finish the book. He followed this with an Orwellian view of stultifying globalization and wilderness release in the Australian eco-fable Getting Back (2000) and then returned to Antarctica and the South Pole for the claustrophobic murder thriller Dark Winter (2001) that includes a scene from the Cascade Mountains near his home.

Dietrich has loved history since childhood and a 1996 visit to Great Britain led to the ancient Roman fortification across northern England known as Hadrian’s Wall. Even before his first novel was published he was determined to write a story about this evocative place, and after numerous delays the result is a war and romance novel set in Roman Britain called Hadrian’s Wall (2004). Dietrich’s fascination with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire continued into a novel about Attila the Hun called The Scourge of God (2005). He then approached the ancient world from a different perspective, writing a novel of pyramid lore set against Bonaparte’s 1798 invasion of Egypt and called Napoleon’s Pyramids (2007).

Dietrich is married and has two grown daughters.  When not writing or reporting, he enjoys hiking, sailing, watching movies and remodeling. 

Napoleon's Pyramids Signed First Edition

Scourge of God Signed First Edition

Barbary Pirates Signed First Edition

Blood of the Reich Signed First Edition

Dakota Cipher Signed First Edition

Getting Back Signed ARC

William Dietrich Bibliography

1998 - Ice Reich

2000 - Getting Back

2001 - Dark Winter

2004 - Hadrian’s Wall

2005 - Scourge of God, The

2007 - Napoleon’s Pyramids

2008 - Dark Winter

2008 - Rosetta Key, The

2009 - Dakota Cipher

2010 - Barbary Pirates, The

2011 (June) - Blood of the Reich