About
My memoir, The Looking Glass Brother, about the intersecting lives of myself, my father, and my homeless and schizophrenic stepbrother, “Little” Peter, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2013 and by Picador Press in 2014. I’ve contributed short fiction, articles and essays to The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Common, Biographile, Serious Eats, Lapham’s Quarterly, Aeon Magazine, Art in America, Out and Outside, among others. I received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award for my short story, The Vegetarian. After the Newtown tragedy, I delivered a radio essay about the mentally ill and gun control on WNYC Public Radio.
Featured Work
The Looking Glass Brother: A Memoir
"Elegantly constructed and written with both stringency and heart, the Looking Glass Brother fluently braids memories of an ultra- privileged childhood and the bleak realities of mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness today. von Ziegesar has the gift for creating rounded characters, and the brother of the title comes alive as a figure of compelling, if heartbreaking paradox, while the portrait of the clueless father is the most vivid of its kind I've read since This Boy's Life."
- Eli Gottlieb, author of The Boy Who Went Away and The Face Thief
“Shines with emotional veracity, sensory precision, cosmic absurdity...and steadfast love.”
- The Kansas City Star
“Peter von Ziegesar’s cinematic eye and exceptional fluency in diverse perspectives make him an adventurously empathic biographer and audaciously candid memoirist in this piercing, thought-provoking portrait of a many-branched American family. He tells arresting tales of life at Peacock Point, the elaborate Long Island estate established by his wealthy great-grandfather, a close associate of J. P. Morgan’s, where multiple generations dwelt with various degrees of eccentricity, mischief, and suicidal despair.”
- Donna Seaman, Booklist, Starred Review
Other Works
Awards and Recognition
- PEN Syndicated Fiction Award
