LidEricKraft

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of hackwork to support the Kraft ménage and the writing of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy, a large work of fiction composed of many interconnected parts. Its parts are the memoirs and collected works of a fictional character, Peter Leroy, who tells an alternative version of his life story; explores the effect of imagination on perception, memory, hope, and fear; holds a fun-house mirror to scenes of life in the United States; ruminates upon the nature of the universe and the role of human consciousness within it; and prods and probes the painful world of time and place in search of the niches where hilarity hides. Kraft and his wife, Madeline, have two sons, Scott and Alexis. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England; and was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.