Steven Petrow, Creative Nonfiction

Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He’s also an opinion columnist for USA Today, where he writes about civil discourse and manners. Steven’s TED Talk, “3 Ways to Practice Civility” has been viewed nearly two million times and translated into 16 languages.

Steven’s latest book, Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old, was published in 2021 and named as one of the New York Times’ “favorite” books of the year.  He is the author of five other books, including Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners. His next book, The Joy You Make, will be published by Penguin Random House in the Fall of 2024.

He’s a much sought after public speaker, and you’re likely to hear him when you stream NPR or one of your favorite  —  or least favorite  —  TV networks. Steven also served as the host and executive producer of “The Civilist,” a podcast from Public Radio International and North Carolina Public Radio WUNC.

A former president of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists,  Steven is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the National Press Foundation. In 2017, he became the named sponsor of The Steven Petrow and Julie Petrow-Cohen LGBTQ Fellowship at the VCCA, a prize that is awarded annually. He’s also a co-founder of the Randall Kenan Prize for Black LGBTQ Fiction awarded by the Lambda Literary Foundation in memory of Mr. Kenan. Steven lives in Hillsborough, N.C.

For more information about Steven, please visit his website.

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REFLECTIONS

It’s no understatement to say that I’ve been waiting for years for the Piedmont Laureate program to return to Creative Non-Fiction. In that time, I’ve been engaged in other volunteer efforts seeking to promote writing, reading, or literacy, and I hope to be able to continue those efforts under the auspices of this program.

Since 2018,  I’ve been a writing mentor in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Visible Ink program, where I’ve helped people (mainly patients) give voice to their stories through writing. As a board member of the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, I initiated our “Virtual VCCA” program in the spring of 2020 (very soon after the pandemic closed down the artists’ residency program) to provide a platform for writers, visual artists and composers–and to develop an online community. While serving as a board member of the Orange County Literacy Council, I co-chaired several of our most successful community events, again connecting writers to the community and vice versa.

During the pandemic I hosted virtual interviews with Orange County authors, including Jill McCorkle, Lee Smith, and John Claude Bemis, as part of the Hillsborough Arts Council’s Writers’ Series. As a queer man, I’ve moderated and spoken at events at Duke and UNC, usually on LGBTQ subjects.

I am a zealot for our bookstores in all three counties and have moderated events regularly over the years, as well spoken about my own books. If I have an underlying philosophy about my volunteerism, it’s this: reading and writing help us to develop empathy for those unlike ourselves, as well as connection and community. These are such powerful concepts—and so needed in these deeply divided times.

In short, I hope to apply all my previous experiences as an advocate for writing and writers to help celebrate the art of writing and continue to build a literary bridge for individuals and communities in Wake, Durham and Orange counties, adding to the great work done by previous Piedmont Laureates.