Author Leslie Pietrzyk to read at Nicola Pizza May 21

Award-winning author Leslie Pietrzyk will read from her novel "Silver Girl" at 5:30 p.m., Monday, May 21, in Nicola Pizza's upstairs room on Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth Beach. The reading will be followed by a brief question-and-answer period, and attendees are welcome to arrive at 5 to order food and/or drink. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs to fischer.maribeth@gmail.com are appreciated in an effort to give Nicola Pizza an estimate of how many to expect. Browseabout Books will be selling copies of the novel at the event. "Silver Girl," which was released in February 2018, has been getting glowing reviews, including a Publishers Weekly starred review that called the novel, "profound, mesmerizing, and disturbing."

"I read the book in two days," said Rehoboth Beach Writers' Guild Executive Director Maribeth Fisher, who contacted Pietrzyk and arranged for the reading. "I teach fiction writing, and I wanted the writers I know to be able to hear Leslie read and talk to her about her writing process. The book, in addition to being a compelling story, does so much at the writing level that is brilliant - the use of scenes, the ability to make readers care about a character who isn't always likeable or nice, the way the chapters are arranged."

Pietrzyk has taught classes for the Rehoboth Beach Writers' Guild before and this autumn will be leading the writers retreat in fiction for the Delaware Division of the Arts. She is also the author of "This Angel on My Chest," which won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her previous novels are "Pears on a Willow Tree," and "A Year and a Day." Pietrzyk is a member of the core fiction faculty at the Converse College low-residency MFA program and teaches often in the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing program. She lives in Alexandria, Va. For more information, go to www.lesliepietrzyk.com.