Coker Visiting Writers Series: Leslie Pietrzyk

The BFA Creative and Professional Writing program is pleased to announce a reading by novelist and story writer Leslie Pietrzyk on October 24 at 8:00 p.m., in Zimmerli Common Room. The event is free and open to the public.

Leslie Pietryzk’s, first collection of short stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Pietrzyk, a novelist and short story writer, has published multiple award-winning books, including her most recent book, a collection of linked short stories set in Washington, DC, Admit This to No One, which was published in late 2021 to critical acclaim. Her previous novel, Silver Girl, published in 2018, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. In addition, she is the author of the two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon) and A Year and a Day (William Morrow). Her award-winning short fiction and essays have appeared in, among others, Ploughshares, Story Magazine, The Hudson Review, Southern Review, Arts & Letters, Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Washingtonian, The Sun, Salon, New England Review, River Styx, Hobart, Midwestern Gothic, Cincinnati Review, and The Washington Post Magazine. Awards include a Pushcart Prize in 2020 and the 2020 Creative Arts Prize from the Polish American Historical Association. Organizations awarding fellowships include the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Hambidge Center, Jentel Foundation, and Hawthornden International Retreat at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland.