Towheaded Stone Thrower is Peterson's tenth book, which includes eight collections of poetry, a novel, and a collection of short stories. His most recent books are The Sadness of Whirlwinds (stories, 2021), The Horse Who Bears Me Away (poems, 2020), and Speech Minus Applause (poems, 2019). Hundreds of his poems and stories have been published in more than eighty journals. Peterson and his wife Harriet were together for 45 years. She died in September of 2016. Her long career as a professional equestrian (teaching, training, competing) broadened and deeply informed Peterson's life as a human being and a writer. His poems have won the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Fellowship in Poetry from the Virginia Arts Commission. A number of his plays have been produced in regional and college theaters. Until his retirement in 2013, he was Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College and was later the Pearl S. Buck Writer-in-Residence there in the Fall of 2017. Many years ago, he was founder and editor of the poetry journal Kudzu and later was editor of The Devil's Millhopper poetry magazine and press. He also taught for fifteen years in the University of Nebraska Omaha Low-Res MFA Program in Creative Writing. Born in Georgia and reared in South Carolina, he continues to live and write in the mysterious and beautiful foothills of southwest Virginia.