Joseph Peschel is a freelance writer who lives in North Sioux City, South Dakota. He was educated at the University of Iowa, where he studied Electrical Engineering and at Iowa State University where half of his double major was in English, concentrating on, of all things, writing and Shakespeare; the other half was journalism. Despite his education, he can still write in English when his editor demands it.
Currently, Peschel is a book reviewer and critic. He has written reviews for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post blog, The Barnes & Noble Review, The Kansas City Star, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Charlotte Observer, and The Raleigh News & Observer.
He has worked as computer journalist and software reviewer. He's written for PC World, InfoWorld, Computer Buyer's Guide and Handbook, PC Upgrade, and other computer magazines. For a time, he worked a gig as a local newspaper computer columnist. He's also taught at the local community college.
Peschel's favorite authors include John Updike, Tobias Wolff, Charles Baxter, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, T.C. Boyle, Bill Bryson, J.D. Salinger, Paul Theroux, and John Irving. He'd like to shoot Tom Wolfe. His favorite long-dead authors are Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Capote, T. S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Shakespeare, and Molière (especially Richard Wilbur's translations). But Peschel insists he still won't like Wolfe after he's gone. He relishes the poems of Richard Wilbur and W. S. Merwin.
When he isn't writing, editing, reading, websurfing, or pitching review ideas to editors, Peschel can be found training students or working out. He is a 3rd degree black belt in TaeKwonDo and head instructor at White Tiger Martial Arts.
