Lydia Peelle

Lydia Peelle is an American fiction writer. In 2009 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" Honoree.

Career

Before her writing career, Peelle worked as a speechwriter for Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. She received a creative writing MFA from the University of Virginia. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, ''Orion, Prairie Schooner'', and elsewhere.

Awards

2009 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree for fiction
2010 Whiting Award for Fiction
2010 PEN/Hemingway Award runner-up
2012 Anahid Literary Prize for emerging Armenian-American writers

The short story “Mule Killers” was published in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 as judged by Kevin Brockmeier, Francine Prose, and Colm Tóibín, and edited by Laura Furman.

Works

The Midnight Cool. Harper Perennial. 2017..

*"Phantom Pain," Originally published in Granta 102: The New Nature Writing, Summer 2008
*"Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing," Originally published in One Story, Issue 87, January 2007

Personal

Peelle was named for her great-great-aunt, abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. She married musician and bandleader Ketch Secor in 2001, in North Andover, Massachusetts. They have two children, a daughter and a son, and divorced in 2018. Peelle lives in Nashville, Tennessee.