I actually, physically, cannot STAND this man. Pedersen was the uni's writer-in-residence for the past two years and he has the brownest nose of anyone I've ever met in my life. This man's face is just caked in shit, he does so much ass-kissing.
The WIR generally spends most of their job working with the students in the Master's program. Pedersen spent the entire two years showing off how many famous people he knows. He pretty much ignored the students until I talked to some of the faculty and he got in trouble for it.
The first event of his I went to, he was interviewing a white male author and a black female poet. Someone in the audience asked a question about facing difficulties in publishing due to your background. The white male author answered that he hadn't had any issues. Pedersen agreed. Pedersen asked for the next question. The black female poet had to interrupt him and say she had some thoughts on the matter.
The second event I went to, he was interviewing a famous female comedian. He spent more time talking than interviewing her, and there was a solid half-hour section of the two-hour event in which he read her own writing to her, edited it out loud as he spoke, and told her how he interpreted it without waiting for her to reply.
And every time I've met him, he's treated me like I'm small. Which, I mean, I am small. I'm a locally-published author with some minor awards noms under my belt. But man, when I asked him about doing a small, informal Q&A about getting my master's dissertation published, he told me that his social events docket was full. Because he was too busy interviewing Nicola Sturgeon in front of a 500-person audience to plan a small event that would be beneficial for the university students he was ostensibly there for.
There are so few people in the world I actively dislike, but man is he one of them.
