Sun-Times Library
When Harry Mark Petrakis began his writing career imagining characters he later admitted knowing little about, he earned nothing for 10 years but rejection notes. But when he turned his eye to his community of immigrants in Chicago’s Greektown and wrote a short story about an old Greek hot dog vendor, he finally sold a story in 1956 to the Atlantic magazine.
The story, “Pericles on 31
st Street,” launched a long career that made him one of Chicago’s best-known authors.
Mr. Petrakis, author of 24 books, most of them fiction, and numerous short stories, died Tuesday at his longtime home near Chesterton, Indiana, of what relatives said was old age. He was 97.