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.

Cornered by Criticism

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Peter Selgin

It’s been months now since my last entry here. I’ve been two-timing you, giving my attention to another blog, this one called “Your First Page.” There, I invite authors to submit (anonymously) up to the first 350 words of a … Continue reading →

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Cookbook of the Dead

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Peter Selgin

In these personality-driven times we tend to associate the word “conceit” with its adjectival cousin conceited, meaning (according to Merriam-Webster) “to have or show an excessively high opinion of oneself.” In fact the first meaning of conceited is “ingenuously contrived.” … Continue reading →

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Beth’s Wish

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Peter Selgin

Like most creative people I have a healthy distrust of rules. But when it comes to writing fiction there’s one rule I feel comfortable about giving to my students and applying myself: “Never state what’s implied.” The inverse (“Never imply … Continue reading →

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Pure Flux: The Writer Revisits His Murdered Darlings

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Peter Selgin

Like Depression-era mothers, we fiction writers hate throwing things away. Instead of hoarding used Saran Wrap and dunked tea bags for rainy days, we squirrel away used words: titles, phrases, sentences, paragraphs—sometimes whole chapters or scenes—stuff that never made it … Continue reading →

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