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May 8, 1940 - February 11, 2007
Mr. Peter Benchley belongs to one of America's most celebrated literary families: His grandfather was the humourist Robert Benchley and his father the novelist Nathaniel Benchley. Peter Benchley has been writing for a living since he was fifteen, when his father, Nathaniel offered to pay Peter, a small salary if he would spend the summer writing, he did and never looked back.
After graduating from Harvard, he went on to write for Newsweek, National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and numerous other magazines, and was a speechwriter for the White House. His interest in the sea began at the age of nine, during summers on Nantucket, which led to his research of sharks and to the writing of Jaws, published in 1974. Mr. Benchley went on to write other best sellers, such as The Deep, Q Clearance and The Girl from the Sea of Cortez. As meticulously researched as Jaws, Beast is based on Mr. Benchley's explorations, on land and in the sea, into the rare and dangerous creature known as Architeuthis dux (giant squid).
Mr. Benchley's interest in marine archaeology inspired him to write the very popular novel, The Deep. He has written, narrated, and appeared in dozens of television documentaries. He is a member of the national council of Environmental Defense and is a spokesman for its Oceans Programme.