Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail program.
October 1 LITM: Aggeliki Pelekidis
Aggeliki Pelekidis was born in Brooklyn to Greek parents. She was a public relations executive in NYC for a decade, including working as the Director of Public Affairs for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Manager of Marketing Communications for the New York Aquarium. She earned her MA and Ph.D in English with a creative writing emphasis from Binghamton University. Her dissertation, a short-story collection titled Patrimonium, won the Distinguished Dissertation Award in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, North Dakota Quarterly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Confrontation, The Masters Review, and many other journals. She’s currently the Associate Director of First-Year Writing at Binghamton University. Her debut novel, Unlucky Mel, was just published by Cornell University Press’s Three Hills Imprint.
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have any recent favorites you’d like to share?
Aggeliki Pelekidis: I’ve been a reader since I was about seven. While a particular book doesn’t stand out, I know I was obsessed with the Walter Farley Black Stallion books. Those Scholastic newsletters on thin paper were my drug of choice back then. To the point that when my mother refused to buy me more books after just paying for some, I stole a check out of her checkbook and attempted to forge it. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to completely fill it in but fortunately, my criminal tendency toward check fraud was thwarted before it began. My mother found my actions funny and to this day I still have that forged check somewhere. Recent favorites include Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and The Idiot by Elif Batuman, both of which I loved.
Rumpus: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Pelekidis: I’d been writing bad poetry (I mean really bad—rhyming and emulating the Romantics but from the perspective of a miserable teen in Brooklyn) throughout my teen years. But one day toward the end of my undergraduate studies, I wrote my first short story. And suddenly I realized this is what I was supposed to do: write prose. I never wrote a poem after that, thus ending my unpromising career as a poet.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with readers?
Pelekidis: Unlucky Mel is a campus novel and comedy satirizing academia while also exploring the way women end up in caregiver roles that hinder their ambitions. The main character, Melody Hollings, is a lovable weirdo who deals with a lot of bad luck coming her way. I hope that readers find it funny while also gaining some sympathy for how female writers and academics are impacted by patriarchal structures still in place.
Rumpus: Is there a favorite Rumpus piece you’d like to recommend?
Pelekidis: Not one piece because there are too many I’ve enjoyed, but the Funny Women section is incredible.
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Author photograph courtesy of Aggeliki Pelekidis
