Leslie Pietrzyk
{{short description|American writer}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2025}}
{{Infobox person/Wikidata|fetchwikidata=ALL|dateformat=mdy}}
Leslie Pietrzyk is an American author who has published three novels, Pears on a Willow Tree, A Year and a Day, and Silver Girl, as well as two books of short stories, This Angel on My Chest and Admit This To No One. An additional historical novel, Reversing the River, set in Chicago on the first day of 1900, was serialized on the literary app, Great Jones Street.{{Cite web|title=About | Leslie Pietrzyk|url=http://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/about/|access-date=2020-07-09|website=www.lesliepietrzyk.com}}
Career
Her short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, New England Review, The Sun, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Washington Post Magazine, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah.{{cite web|last=Pietrzyk|first=Leslie|title=Brief Bio|url=http://lesliepietrzyk.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-bio.html|date=2007-11-08|accessdate=2009-02-11}}{{Cite web|title=Core and Visiting Faculty|url=https://www.converse.edu/program/master-of-fine-arts-mfa/current-and-recent-core-faculty/|access-date=2020-07-09|website=Converse College|language=en-US}}
She holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from American University.{{cite news|last=Hafiz|first=Amina|title=On Being A Writer, Food, And Stubbornness: An Interview with Leslie Pietrzyk|url=http://www.american.edu/cas/lit/folio/2005winter_inter.html|work=Folio|date=Winter 2005|accessdate=2009-02-11}} She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and teaches in the Masters in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University as well as the Low-Residency MFA program at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Pietrzyk is also the founder and editor of Redux, an online journal featuring previously published work.{{Cite web|title=Submission Guidelines for Redux|url=http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html|access-date=2020-07-09|language=en}}
Personal life
In a 2015 Salon piece, Pietrzyk wrote that she met her first husband in college, that he died of a heart attack at age 37, after they had been married for ten years, and that she later remarried.{{cite news |last1=Pietrzyk |first1=Leslie |title=This is the greatest love story and ghost story |url=https://www.salon.com/2015/06/30/this_is_the_greatest_love_story_and_ghost_story/ |access-date=15 May 2023 |work=Salon |date=1 July 2015 |language=en}}
Awards and honors
- Her first short story collection, This Angel on My Chest., won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.{{Cite web|url=https://www.converse.edu/program/master-of-fine-arts-mfa/current-and-recent-core-faculty/#1487275321270-78275b22-a84f|title=Core and Visiting Faculty | Converse University | Spartanburg, SC}}
- Pietrzyk's story "Stay There," first published in The Southern Review and later included in her 2021 collection of linked short stories, Admit This To No One, won a 2020 Pushcart Prize.{{cite web |title=News |url=https://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/news/ |website=Leslie Pietrzyk |access-date=25 April 2023}}
- Pietrzyk was a co-winner of the Polish American Historical Association's 2020 Creative Arts Prize, awarded to artists "who have promoted an awareness of the Polish experience in the Americas."{{cite web |title=Creative Arts Prize |url=https://polishamericanstudies.org/text/26/creative-arts.html |website=Polish American Historical Association |access-date=25 April 2023}}
- Other awards include residencies to Hawthornden Castle, the Wolff Cottage in Fairhope (AL), Writer in Residence at ARGS, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and The Hambidge Center.
- Short story awards include the Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart Prize for Fiction from Shenandoah and the Chris O’Malley Fiction Prize from Madison Review.{{Cite web|url=http://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/about/|title=About}}
Works
- Pears on a Willow Tree, New York, NY Bard 1998. {{ISBN|9780380976676}}, {{OCLC|245707562}}
- A Year and a Day: a Novel, New York : William Morrow, 2003. {{ISBN|9780060554651}}, {{OCLC|223590478}}
- This Angel on My Chest : stories, Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. {{ISBN|9780822944423}}, {{OCLC|910334443}}
- Silver Girl, Los Angeles, CA: Unnamed Press, 2018. {{ISBN|9781944700515}}, {{OCLC|1025341666}}{{Cite web|url=https://therumpus.net/2018/03/the-rumpus-interview-with-leslie-pietrzyk/|title=Playing Whack-a-Mole: Talking with Leslie Pietrzyk|date=2018-03-14|website=The Rumpus.net|language=en|access-date=2019-10-09}}
- Admit This To No One: Stories, Unnamed Press, 2021.
References
{{commons category}}
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/about/ Official website]
- [http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/ Redux Literary Journal]
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pietrzyk, Leslie}}
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:21st-century American novelists
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American short story writers
Category:American University alumni
Category:Northwestern University alumni
Category:American women novelists
Category:American women short story writers
Category:Writers from Alexandria, Virginia
Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty
Category:Novelists from Virginia