|  Author, PJ Piccirillo is shown here discussing his new novel ‘Heartland’ with a group of ECCHS students.
Seven years ago, PJ Piccirillo abandoned a job in industrial marketing and set out to become a fiction writer. For his subject matter, he drew on the people and places that spoke to him, and that led to an historical novel set in and around Elk County. His book, “Heartwood,” is a story of intrigue, love and betrayal that is not only set here, but traces and interprets our logging and carbon heritage. Scenes take place in a Cameron County logging camp, the sooty innards of a carbon factory, in the homes of lumber tycoons, a drafty company house in a tannery town, during a bear hunt, even in 1913's finest New York hotel. Piccirillo spent three years pitching the novel, and in January, it was commercially published by Middleton Books. “Heartwood” is now receiving strong reviews. Piccirillo was born in St. Marys, and now lives in Horton Township with his wife, Laurie, and their three sons: JP, 5 years; Michelangelo, 4 years; and Antonio, 6 months. Piccirillo's mother, Mary Ann (Herzing) Piccirillo, is from St. Marys, and his father, Mike, is a native of Ridgway. His grandfather, Fish Herzing, was a neighborhood butcher in St. Marys, well known for his sausage, soltz and scrapple. His grandmother, Helen Neubert Herzing, was a nurse in central supply at Andrew Kaul Memorial Hospital for many years. Piccirillo is a graduate of St. Francis College in Loretto where he majored in English. “While at St. Francis,” Piccirillo said, “I was fortunate to work with a 72 year old Franciscan priest, Fr. Bede Hines, in one-on-one novel writing and short story classes. I discovered there that, yes, I can do the impossible task of putting 100,000 words into some sensible form. But I still questioned whether I could make those words into relevant literature.” After college, practical considerations overshadowed artistic dreams, and PJ landed on a career track, eventually doing other kinds of writing--technical and promotional--while working in industrial marketing for Invensys in DuBois. For those thirteen years, it had remained important to him to stay in the area. “In my work today, as I teach creative writing in schools and prisons as a state artist-in-residence,” Piccirillo said, “I look back on those years, and tell students that the little voice inside your head is rarely wrong, whether it's telling you that a turn of phrase on your page just isn't good enough, or that you're not doing in life what you're meant to do.” At 35, PJ listened to his own voice, and went back to what he'd felt most alive doing--writing fiction. Thanks to his wife's encouragement and sacrifices, he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Southern Maine and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. He decided he'd move ahead, win or lose, and has never looked back. Since then, Piccirillo has been publishing short fiction in literary journals, freelancing magazine articles and op-ed pieces, and working for the PA Council on the Arts as a resident artist, as well as for the PA Humanities Council (PHC) as a commonwealth speaker. His PHC program, “Missing Pages: the Neglected Literature of the Alleghenies,” makes a case for a literary canon of Pennsylvania's Allegheny literature. He also teaches creative writing at arts agencies, including ECCOTA, and conducts seminars on craft at writers conferences. “I tell students that no skill will better serve them and the people they help in this world than the ability to write clearly, actively, and with revelation. Writing is doing its duty when it makes readers see things in new ways or when they ask of themselves or their world new questions. Sometimes you have to make readers very uncomfortable to do that,” he said. “And if students ever ask for general advice,’ he added, “I tell them to live up to their own expectations, no one else's.” Piccirillo's writing draws from the storied landscapes and rich heritage of the forestland and industrial burgs of Elk and surrounding counties, which, unlike so many other regions rich in history, are uncharted in American literature. One of his goals as a writer is to change that. Inspiration comes as well, he says, from his grandfathers' stories about life in northern Pennsylvania working in tanneries, mines and shops, on farms, and in the woods. Between semesters at St. Francis, Piccirillo worked five years in a powdered metal plant. “I drew upon the characters, the sounds and smells, the heat and anxieties of that setting for my factory scenes in 'Heartwood, ” he said. He also relied on interviews with old time carbon people and the stories he grew up hearing from a great aunt who worked at the Stackpole Lodge. He studied the archives at the St. Marys Historical society, and the carbon company histories collected at the St. Marys Public Library. Piccirillo spent five years researching railroad era logging and historical sites, as well. An avid outdoorsman and proponent of our area's natural beauty, Piccirillo’s work praises our breathtaking vistas, rare solitude and wild places. But it also has undertones of warning, cautioning that the modern threats to our recovering landscapes are the dishonest ones--politicians and bureaucrats in thinly veiled disguises, telling us what's best for us. “The artists here know something that I hope people in positions of influence heed. St. Marys has a cultural, industrial and environmental heritage as rich as any in this nation. The city is exceptional in that until recently, it retained that heritage. But it did so unconsciously, as the people of a unique and, fortunately, self-sufficient community went about their business,” he states. A goal of Piccirillo's work as a resident artist is getting students to cherish and preserve through literary art their heritage. “The world has at last encroached upon St. Marys,” Piccirillo said. “If younger generations are going to retain what's left of their heritage, and people from afar are going to appreciate what's here, they need to be made aware of what others knew in their hearts. 'Heartwood' attempts to do just that; it's an authentically researched story of stalwart Bavarian settlers, industrial barons, woodhicks and lumbermen.” “It always amazes me that the average Pennsylvanian knows more about failed refugee settlements like Ole Bull's New Norway Colony than about than the living, breathing, successful one of St. Marys. I think we all know, though, that there's something distinctive about St. Marys and its people, and I try to catch that “something” in the book,” he noted. During his literary career, Piccirillo has twice won the Appalachian Writers Association Award for Short Fiction, he was winner of the Gunard Carlson Memorial Writing Contest and his novel, “Heartwood,” has been hailed by Pulitzer nominee Clint McCown, as "Smooth and Lyrical, a pleasure to read." What's next for PJ? “I'm revising some of my short stories and compiling them into a collection. I'm also gathering thoughts and doing research for another project that my publisher is interested in.” But don't ask for specifics on that. “Many writers are superstitious,” he said. “We think that if we let it out, we'll jinx it.” “The obligation of the literary artist is to make sense of the human experience,” Piccirillo said. “Part of that duty for me is to tell the important but unsung story of our region.” For those who may be interested, “Heartwood” is available at www.middletonbooks.com, the ECCOTA gallery in Ridgway, and at bookstores everywhere. Public discussions of “Heartwood” will take place at the St. Marys Senior Center on April 15, and at the St. Marys Public Library on July 1. | 
