Leta McCollough Seletzky
Photo by Gretchen Adams
Bio
Leta McCollough Seletzky grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and now lives in Walnut Creek, California. A litigator-turned-essayist and memoirist, her work appears in the Atlantic; the New York Times; the Grio; O, The Oprah Magazine; the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her essay “The Man in the Picture,” published in O, The Oprah Magazine, was selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2019. She holds a BA from Northwestern University and a JD from the George Washington University Law School. Her father-daughter memoir, The Kneeling Man, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press.
It feels appropriate that I was standing on my front porch when I learned I’d been named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, as my trajectory was set on and around my grandparents’ front porch in Memphis, Tennessee, where I first confronted many of the topics that still obsess me and haunt my work. The story that sparked my writing career—my father’s life of espionage that brought him to the scene of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination—was one I’d spent my life running from before it chased me down and demanded to be told. In the retelling, more stories surfaced. They were equally insistent, personal yet universal.
This fellowship grants me the freedom to pursue these topics without financial constraints and with the validation and sense of confidence that comes from this honor. I am deeply humbled to be part of the NEA’s singular legacy.