Author Archives: Peter Selgin

About Peter Selgin

Peter Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, Life Goes to the Movies, a novel, two books on the craft of fiction, and several children’s books. His memoir, Confessions of a Left-Handed Man, was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize. His latest novel, The Water Master, won the William Faulkner Society Prize, selected by Random House Senior Editor Will Murphy. His work has won the Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, the Dana Award, six Best American Essay notable essay citations, and two selections for the Best American series. A second memoir, The Inventors, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in April of 2016. He teaches at Antioch University’s MFA program and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia College & State University.

Ordering Chaos

Posted on September 4, 2010 by Peter Selgin

Among a fiction writer’s greatest challenges: how to evoke chaos while still making sense. The phrase “making sense” here is key, since ultimately the question boils down to whose sense is being rendered. If the chaos confronting the reader is … Continue reading →

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A Rude Awakening

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Peter Selgin

Deep into her alcohol-ridden sleep, a woman is summoned by the ringing of her cell phone. Phone calls deep into the night rarely portend good things, and the given scene offers no exception. Here, via her sister, the phone delivers … Continue reading →

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Waiting for the Abbot

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Peter Selgin

How do you generate drama or elicit any kind of interest—let alone excitement —from a scene the main action of which consists of a group of people sitting in chairs? That’s the challenge that the author of this memoir presents … Continue reading →

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Miss Connecticut

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Peter Selgin

She must have gotten on in Springfield while I slept. I awoke to find her sitting there next to me, wearing a zippered down coat and looking, as far as I could see, much too pretty to have landed there … Continue reading →

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