Red Weather and Dead Sweaters: A Conversation with Peter Cameron
By Lucy Seward ‘24
Peter Cameron graduated Hamilton in 1982 with a B.A. in English Literature. He went on to have a long and very impressive career as an author. After college, Peter began to publish short stories, many for The New Yorker, and later transitioned to novels. He has done work in publishing, as a professor, and for non-profit organizations. Peter is still writing, and his most recent novel, What Happens at Night, was published in 2020.
Peter became involved with Red Weather his freshman year, working closely with the editors for three years before he became editor himself his senior year. Peter loved working on Red Weather; it was the first time he ever saw his own work in print, preparing him for a career of getting published and being read and critiqued by other people. He also loved the physical process of laying out the issues; he finds that understanding how books are made was a very useful skill he still values a lot. He recalled fondly one spring issue in particular in which the magazine opened both ways: one cover titled “Red Weather” and the other “Dead Sweaters.” Everyone had to submit pieces under that playful title, whether art or poetry or fiction. Peter liked the way that issue allowed for so much creativity while being humorous. Peter wrote and read constantly while at school here, writing a lot of poetry and fiction that focused on the future life he envisioned for himself in the city.
Peter likes to write primarily about people and relationships, interests that have stayed constant throughout his career. His style, too, has remained fairly consistent, although he has found that his stories are less grounded in reality now.
“My books allude to a larger, more fluid world, with moments of surrealism or magical realism … I am trying to capture the more complex experience of being alive,” he said.
Although he started as a short story writer and still loves them, for the past thirty years, Peter has considered himself mainly a novelist. He thinks this is because he gets ideas less frequently, and they are more complex, requiring the time and space for a novel.
When I asked him what he would recommend to young writers, Peter said, “reading and writing is a very personal thing … read things that excite and energize and inspire you. Read as widely as possible, find authors you like, and let one book lead you to another. At Hamilton, you have so much time to read, and you should use that.”