About the Author: Peter J. Stavros is a writer in Louisville, Kentrucky. His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post and The Boston Globe Magazine. Peter is also a playwright whose plays have been produced across the country, garnering Audience Choice accolades at a number of festivals. He earned a BA in English from Duke University, where he received the Newman Ivey White Award for Fiction and studied creative writing on a graduate level at Emerson College and Harvard University. More can be found at www.peterjstavros.com Etchings Press: What was the inspiration behind the collection? Peter J. Stavros: One evening my wife pulled up this picture on Facebook of some friends I had been close with at an earlier point of my life, but we hadn’t kept in touch—and it was a picture of this smiling happy family on a beach somewhere, who I hadn’t seen in a few years and hardly recognized at first by how much they had changed (or “moved on” would be a better term). It occurred to me then how with social media you can never really escape your past. So I thought of writing a story, which then became this collection, about someone who, despite his best efforts, could not escape his past because his past, like really everyone’s past, can generally be accessed with just a few keystrokes on a laptop. EP: What do you want readers to take away from reading this collection? PJS: I want the readers to see the humor in this. It can get heavy as the readers go through this journey with our character, with the anxieties and uncertainties that he is experiencing. But there are moments of dark comedy as well. I especially like the image of him pushing this terrible squeaking desk chair down the hallway as he’s being escorted out of the office by security. As someone who has been escorted out of an office by security, I wish I had had the nerve to pull off something like that. Also, I hope the readers appreciate the interconnectedness of the individual pieces, with the callbacks and slow reveals, particularly since these stories were written over a period of a few years. And lastly I just want the readers to enjoy reading this— and maybe read it again—and perhaps it’ll spark some creativity in them.
fall 2020
UIndy
13