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.

Cain’s Book

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Peter Selgin

Like rock stars, some novels are eaten alive by their fans. Embraced by a severely circumscribed subculture, they turn from works of art into manifestoes, or worse, Bibles, and cease to be read by ordinary folk. Scottish-born Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Dreaming on Paper, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Little Gray Men

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Peter Selgin

In the early 1960’s, before the Kennedy assassination and Little Rock, before “I have a dream,” on a lonesome country road in New Hampshire, a mixed-race couple, him black, her white, encounter a flying saucer, which assails them with its … Continue reading →

Posted in Dreaming on Paper, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Head Paintings

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Peter Selgin

In my waking life, I’ve been a figurative painter and illustrator. But in my dreams, or just lying in bed, I was an abstract expressionist. For years I dreamed paintings—if “dreaming” is the right word, since often the paintings appeared … Continue reading →

Posted in Dreaming on Paper, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Songs That Have Hummed Me

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Peter Selgin

Some time ago I stopped being able to listen to music when writing. First I had to cut out music with words, then strong rhythms, then all forms of percussion. For a while I listened to movie scores, but soon … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment