John Rowlett, a native of Golden-cheek country, has been enchanted by birds since childhood. One of the founders of Field Guides, where he has long played a governing role, John has extensive field experience guiding bird tours throughout the Americas. Pepper--as he is known by his colleagues--has forever found birding at its best in the complex Amazonian drainage and the breathtaking Andean uplift, but he takes great pleasure in birding from the Appalachian Forest to the Atlantic Forest with novice and veteran alike.

When not on tour, he reprises a keen and abiding interest in genre theory, occasionally finding time to write about the enriching mixture of the birding life and the literary life. The powerful distraction of birds in the field continues to delay his on-going study of Wordsworth's poetry, a collection of Ralph Cohen's essays, and a review of ecocriticism.

John received a doctorate in literary philosophy from the University of Virginia, where he later spent two years as Program Director of the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change. Pepper is the 2009 recipient of the American Birding Association's Roger Tory Peterson Distinguished Service Award. He and Abbie, the "Sungrebe," live in Charlottesville.