Piers Paul Read is a British novelist and non-fiction writer. Educated at the Benedictines' Ampleforth College, and subsequently entered St John's College, University of Cambridge where he received his BA and MA (history).
Artist-in-Residence at the Ford Foundation in Berlin (1963–4), Harkness Fellow, Commonwealth Fund, New York (1967–8), member of the Council of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1971–5), member of the Literature Panel at the Arts Council, (1975–7), and Adjunct Professor of Writing, Columbia University, New York (1980). From 1992–7 he was Chairman of the Catholic Writers' Guild. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).
His most well-known work is the non-fiction Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974), an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes, later adapted as a film.
