Leslie Pietrzyk’s "This Angel On My Chest" Awarded the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of short stories, This Angel On My Chest, has been awarded the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. It will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in the fall of 2015. 

Leslie describes the collection as “unconventionally-linked stories, each about a different young woman whose husband dies suddenly and unexpectedly. Ranging from traditional stories to lists, a quiz, a YouTube link, and even a “lecture” about creative writing, the stories grasp to put into words the ways we all cope with unspeakable loss. For me, it’s a very personal book, a fictional exploration of my experience of losing my first husband to a heart attack at age 37.”

Leslie credits VCCA directly with the genesis of This Angel On My Chest: “I actually started down this road while at VCCA, inspired by a seemingly random conversation at breakfast with a poet who was interested in the literature of subcultures...and that was my self-assigned task for the day, to write about a subculture.  I chose the young widow support group...and so it all began.”

 http://www.lesliepietrzyk.com/





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