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Thalia Cheronis Selz
Thalia Cheronis Selz of Southampton died on June 15 at the Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, from complications of Alzheimer’s. She was 84.
Ms. Selz was a teacher, a short-story writer, a former writer-in-residence at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and one of the three founding editors of Story Quarterly.
Her fiction appeared in many magazines, including Partisan Review, Antaeus, and Chicago, and has been anthologized in “Best American Short Stories” and the O Henry Awards. For more than 30 years, she compiled and wrote the biographies, and interviewed the artists, for the show and catalogue, “Modern Odysseys: Greek American Artists of the 20th Century, Queens Museum of Art 2000.”
The first wife of the art historian Peter Selz,—the former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—she helped in the research and editing of his early books. In addition, she was instrumental during the first years of the artists’ housing project, Westbeth, in the selection process for artists and assigning apartments and thus helped make possible the low-income housing and studio space for a generation of New York artists.
Family said Ms. Selz will be remembered for her quirky, warm generosity, her vibrancy and mystery, and her extraordinary, wide reaching intelligence.
She is survived by two daughters, Gabrielle Selz of Southampton and Tanya Selz of California; a brother, Dion Cheronis of Colorado; and a grandson, Theo Mync of Southampton.
No services were held. A memorial is being planned and will be announced in a future edition of The Press.
on Jun 23, 2010