Peter Beren: Professional History
“Peter is a people person and his publishing relationships run wide and deep. Ethical, smart, loyal and creative, who could ask for anything more?”
— Lena Tabori,
Publisher
PETER BEREN is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) and a book publishing consultant to authors, self-publishers and independent publishers. Formerly Vice-President of Publishing at Insight Editions, Publisher of Sierra Club Books, Publisher of VIA Books, an Acquisitions Editor for Jeremy Tarcher and Executive Editor at And/Or Press, Inc., he has more than four decades of experience in the book publishing industry. At Sierra Club he received three Benjamin Franklin Awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), at VIA Books, the book publishing division of the California State Automobile Association. Beren was awarded the Merit Award for Excellence in Communication by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).
As a literary agent, publisher or editor, Beren has worked with such authors as photographers Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting, Galen Rowell, and Baron Wolman, as well as independent scholars like Colin Wilson, Ralph Metzner and Robert Anton Wilson. He has also published graphic artists, Jack Katz and Brian Froud, musician Jerry Garcia, and California State Senator and counter-culture icon, Tom Hayden.
He is the author or co-author of eight books, including The Writers Legal Companion, California the Beautiful, and The Golden Gate. California the Beautiful was a Foreword INDIES Award finalist in 2009. His articles have appeared in Mother Jones, Newsweek, Publisher’s Weekly, and Tufts Magazine and was a contributor to such anthologies as America’s Cup San Francisco (Insight Editions) and Moving Into Space (HarperCollins).
The founder of The Peter Beren Agency, he is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Tufts University and makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.