Andrew Peterson

Andrew Peterson is a dashing and dangerous personage, blatting about country roads on his flaming zebra steed. If it wasn’t for his laughter, his delighted nerdery, and his love of community, he would be terrifying. That, and his habit of stopping to help stalled motorists. And his generosity. In fact, Andrew is not terrifying at all, although he did once drown a car which had done nothing to deserve it.

The son of a pastor, Andrew was born in Monticello, IL where he and his family lived until relocating to his parents’ home state of Florida when he was seven. After encountering the music of Rich Mullins just after high school, he fell in love with the Gospel and decided to go to Bible college, where he met and married Jamie, rediscovered Narnia, and began his career as a singer-songwriter. He released his first album, Walk, in 1996, and he and Jamie moved to Nashville upon graduation the following year. He has since released ten more studio albums, with a new album, Resurrection Letters: Vol. 1, arriving this Easter. Meanwhile, he and Jamie have had three brilliant children—Aedan, 18; Asher, 17; and Skye, 15—who are all pursuing artistic careers of their own.

In 2004, Andrew read The Chronicles of Narnia to 5- and 4-year-old Aedan and Asher, and bewildered his boys by crying at some point during each book. When he closed the last volume, he realized that the time had finally come for him to begin his own story. He spent weeks creating a map of a world he named Aerwiar, and as he did so the Igiby family sprang up from the soil in his sketchbook. In 2008 his first book was published, and the Wingfeather Saga was complete with book four in 2014. A short story collection called Wingfeather Tales followed in 2016. In addition to storytelling via music and books, Andrew and his friend J. Chris Wall are working on adapting the Wingfeather Saga to screen as an animated series.

Andrew continues to write stories and make music, and thanks to his music, he also travels the world. One of his favorite places to go is Sweden, where his great-grandfather was born in a town called Kalmar. He has since met second cousins there and visited his great-grand-uncle’s farm, but sadly the cat had gone by the time he got there. He is also Proprietor of the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit he began with his brother Pete. “The common thread in all this,” he says, “is my love for Christ and his Kingdom, my belief in the power of story and art, and my need for family and community. If I had to boil it all down, I'd say this: I want to use my gifts to tell the truth, and to tell it as beautifully as I can.”

The Peterson family lives in a magical place they call The Warren just south of Nashville, where Andrew tends a garden, keeps bees, and speeds about in his trusty golf cart. If you ever visit, he will make sure you notice the dry-stack stone wall and arch he built by hand, just as his ancestors did.

Contributed by Laure Hittle aka Madame Sidler

In the Author's Own Words

My point is this: we’re all creative. Tolkien coined the word subcreator. Some of you have likely heard me or someone else talk about that idea, but it bears repeating. He said, “We make in the manner in which we were made.” To put it another way, we serve a Creator, with a capital C. One of the ways in which we’ve been made in his image is that we also delight in creating. Everything we make is derivative and secondary, and in some manner draws attention to the primary creation, the truth, and the Creator himself. That means everyone on earth could justly label themselves a Creative. That means that even if you don’t wear hipster glasses, skinny jeans, and have Justin Bieber hair, you're a Creative. It means that even if you’re a banker, a produce manager, or a doctor you're a Creative. So allow me to reclaim that hijacked adjective, for the good of the world. None of us in this room is a Creative. But all of us are creative.Excerpt from Everybody’s a “Creative”: A Rabbit Room Rant