Peter Shianna was born and raised in Red Oak, a farming village of 100 people in northwestern Illinois near the city of Freeport. His father worked on the railroad; his mother Marilyn was a homemaker and an artist. His two sisters, Peggy and Vicki, rounded out the family. Pete attended a one-room school where he learned a lot by watching the higher grades recite their lessons for Miss Sullivan at the front of the room. The eavesdropping always gave him a leg up as he passed through the grades.

Pete’s writing career began in the second grade when his parents gave him a toy typewriter for Christmas. By spinning a dial to the correct letter and pushing down hard on the print bar, he could type one letter at a time, which he did for hours upon hours to grind out fictional sports stories featuring famous athletes of the day. It was a noisy contraption; the racket must have made his parents wish they’d given him a set of drums. 

In addition to farm work, he dug graves, soda jerked, poured cement, pumped gas, and labored in a wire mill and a slaughter house. His free-time passion was baseball; his goal, the big leagues. He didn’t make it because he wasn’t anywhere close to being good enough, but he didn’t know that back then.

He got lucky and was able to attend Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa for a degree in economics. After working for three years, he enrolled at Northern Illinois University for his M.A. in English. He then taught at NIU and the University of Cincinnati before entering the insurance and financial services industry as an agent. Following a move into the Home Office, he served in several executive positions, including Vice President, Field Operations.

A licensed private pilot, he enjoys the arts, travel and cards, especially poker and bridge. He’s an avid golfer and pickleball player. He and his wife, the former Lori Johnson of Freeport, Illinois, live in Florida. They have two grown sons, Eric and Kevin. Pete’s glad he didn’t have to compete with Lori academically. She raced through Purdue in four years with straight A’s, except for a lone B in a philosophy of art course. She raised two boys at the same time and never missed a beat at home, corporate entertaining and all.

Pete’s writing has appeared in the Rockhurst Review, the Kansas City Star and the Creative Writing Journal. His fiction has been included in four anthologies of short stories.

His first novel, Take Off: A Time for War, A Time for Love, is a picaresque novel of self-discovery, a journey that both men and women relate to because they’ve  taken the journey, or wish they had—or still want to. Critic and reader feedback has been gratifying beyond all expectations. (Click Books tab for critic and reader comments.)