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Harry Mark Petrakis
Doctor of Humane Letters

Harry Mark Petrakis has worked as a laborer, real estate agent, speech writer, steelworker, and salesman. Today, people all over the world know the 82-year-old resident of Chesterton, Ind., by one vocation: author.

Petrakis has written 18 novels and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. He has honorary degrees from the University of Illinois, Roosevelt University, Hellenic College, and Governors State University. The New York Times has called him “one of our finest writers.”

This year, Indiana University Northwest honors Petrakis with a Doctor of Humane Letters for being a role model who has contributed to cultural diversity through his fiction. Many of his stories focus on the experiences of Greek immigrants and Greek Americans in blue-collar industrial regions, a subject that resonates well with the many working-class descendents of eastern and southern Europeans who populate Northwest Indiana.

“Harry Petrakis has visibly contributed to the development of understanding about Greek American society and serves as a model for present and future generations,” says Patricia Lundberg, executive director for the Center for Regional Excellence at IU Northwest. “His creative work and many awards and achievements have been earned in a framework of high personal integrity and concern for the public good that would make his father—a Greek Orthodox priest—very proud.”

“His work reflects values that Indiana University Northwest is striving to embody,” says Bruce Bergland, chancellor of IU Northwest.

Petrakis attended one year of college at the University of Illinois, and then his education took the form of life experiences. He has traveled the world as a storyteller, acted as a visiting professor (at Ohio University and San Francisco State University), biographer, novelist, and playwright. He is a member of the Friends of American Writers, the Friends of Literature, and the Society of Midland Authors, has won O’Henry and Carl Sandburg awards, and has been listed in Who’s Who in America. His novels include A Dream of Kings, which he adapted to a screenplay for a major motion picture starring Anthony Quinn.

Petrakis’ parents came to America in 1916 from Crete and his father served as a priest in Price, Utah. The family later moved to St. Louis, where Petrakis was born in 1923, then to Chicago, where he was raised alongside six siblings. His mother was a social activist who helped new immigrants and his father officiated over the Saints Constantine and Helen Church in Chicago.

Petrakis became entranced with books when he was bedridden with tuberculosis as a child. He soon started writing poetry, and though he thought he was “not very good,” he continued writing as a means of expression. He soon switched to writing short stories, which he submitted to publishers for ten years before one was accepted. His first published story, Pericles on 31st Street, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly when he was 32. Petrakis settled in Indiana in 1968 and continues to draw inspiration for many of his characters and settings from the area.

Today, his stories are appreciated by thousands. “He is a masterful storyteller, and his vision of the human condition underlines the universal values which bind us together, not just those which separate and divide us,” says Angeline Prado Komenich, professor emerita of Spanish from IU Northwest. “Harry surpasses the narrow classification as a Greek American writer; he is an American author with a keen eye for the details of urban life, the tensions which underlie the strands of our multiethnic and multiracial society. It is with pride that we can recognize him as a distinguished member of our community.”