Peter J. Stavros is an award-winning author and playwright. His collection of short stories, Three in the Morning and You Don’t Smoke Anymore, won the Etchings Press 2020 Book Prize for a Chapbook of Prose. His debut novel, The Thing About My Uncle, was released on August 20, 2024 by BHC Press.
A former reporter for the Associated Press, Peter has published his writing in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and magazines, including a humor piece on the pitfalls of tandem kayaking for married couples in The Boston Globe Magazine, an essay about rediscovering the joy of skateboarding later in life for Chicken Soup for the Soul: Just Say Yes, and a series of short stories about a close-knit community of quirky characters and eccentrics in The Saturday Evening Post that are included in the collection, (Mostly) True Tales From Birchmont Village. Peter has also written about one young man’s inspiring quest to make his high school basketball team in the YA novella, Tryouts. And in All The Things She Says, Peter has put together a number of his short stories that were initially published nonsequentially over a span of more than seven years to chronicle, in vignettes and episodes, the journey of a couple during their thirty-year relationship.
As a playwright, Peter’s plays have been performed across the country, and abroad, with one reviewer commenting that he “wowed ‘Ten-Tucky [Festival of Ten Minute Plays]’ audiences in 2017 with ‘Squirrels in a Knothole,’ a dark comedy about squirrels watching cubicle workers …” (LEO Weekly). “Squirrels in a Knothole,” “PMA and the Beast,” “Resisting” and “Geese” are among his plays that have received Audience Choice accolades at various festivals. “Geese” was also selected for the first season of the virtual theatre festival The Big Break. But Peter is perhaps most proud that his play, “Out on a Limb,” was part of a drama class for homeschooled students living in Choma, Zambia – among other classrooms!
Peter earned a BA in English from Duke University, where he received the prestigious Newman Ivey White Award for Fiction, a JD from the University of Kentucky, and he studied creative writing on a graduate level at Emerson College and Harvard University.
A licensed attorney, Peter has also worked as a gospel radio DJ, he sold t-shirts out of a pushcart on the streets of downtown Boston, and he once swam across the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz Island to Marina Green Beach. And, as a lifelong pro wrestling fan, he hopes to someday land a perfect step-up enzuiguri. Watch for Peter to make his background acting debut (if his scenes don’t end up on the cutting room floor!) next year in the feature film, Dead Man’s Wire, directed by Gus Van Sant—along with other productions he has been cast in (as a detective, a surgeon, a mean stepfather, a Miami nightclubber, etc.).
Peter writes fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and plays. Originally from Queens, New York, he lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife and their cheese-stealing, spaghetti-eating rescue Golden Retriever, Molly. He is available to speak to book clubs or writing groups, or for podcasts; please use the Contact form.
Author interviews here, here and here
*Author photos credit: Steve Squall
Peter J. Stavros 