Pavia, Peter 1959-

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Pavia, Peter 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Rochester, NY; married; children: a daughter.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. New School Writing Program, New York, NY, faculty member, 2001—.

WRITINGS:

Dutch Uncle (novel), Dorchester (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne) The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, Regan Books (New York, NY), 2005.

The Cuba Project: Castro, Kennedy, Dirty Business, Double Dealing, and the FBI's Tamale Squad, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including GQ, New York Sun, New York Post, and the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Peter Pavia writes both fiction and nonfiction. In his novel Dutch Uncle, small-time career criminal Harry Healy finds himself hiding out in Fort Lauderdale after the "Dutchman," who hired him to deliver a package, turns up dead. Harry meets a caring woman bartender where he is working as a bouncer and his life appears to be on the rebound. But when he dumps her and heads off to New York, both cops and gangsters are after him. Keir Graff, writing in Booklist, referred to Dutch Uncle as a "crime chuckler." Bookreporter.com contributor Joe Hartlaub wrote: "Pavia has an extremely impressive debut here … as he deftly combines elements of dark humor, violence, and mystery into a modern morality tale with bits of subtlety and unexpected optimism."

Pavia collaborated with Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne to write The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry. The book presents a view of the porn industry over nearly five decades in the words of those who work within it. "At its best, straight stories in Other Hollywood become larger than life," wrote Dana Harris in Variety.

In The Cuba Project: Castro, Kennedy, Dirty Business, Double Dealing, and the FBI's Tamale Squad, Pavia follows the story of Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in 1959 to the Bay of Pigs invasion backed by the United States in 1961. In addition to historical records, the author also bases his story on many contemporary interviews with ex-FBI agents and others involved in the story. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that the author "turns in a tale of spy-versus-spy that makes neither side look good."