National bestseller and award-winning author Peter Heller will be the public keynote speaker for the 27th annual Highland Park Literary Festival. Heller is the author of The River, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip. Heller has also written the novels Celine, The Painter, The Dog Stars, and The Guide. An award-winning adventure writer and a longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek.