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.

Was This Review Helpful? The Search for an Unassailable Masterpiece

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Peter Selgin

Not long ago I asked the young students in a fiction workshop I was teaching to name a few novels that, in their view, stood the best chance of becoming seminal works of their generation. Among titles that came up … Continue reading →

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John Hoyer Updike, 1932 – 2009

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Peter Selgin

How sad to learn that writing and publishing 60 books—many superb—does not make one immortal. He never won the Nobel Prize. He didn’t need to. The quality of his best work will carry him. His plots weren’t memorable; unlike Dickens … Continue reading →

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Six Stories That Influenced Me

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Peter Selgin

In no special order: 1. A Painful Case—James Joyce. Like everyone else in college I had to read Joyce’s Dubliners. I remember being touched by a passage in “A Painful Case” where the protagonist’s entire sad existence is equated with … Continue reading →

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Dirty Books

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Peter Selgin

Books are filthy. I found that out some months ago when I volunteered to help re-shelve books as part of a renovation project at the Mercantile Library in Manhattan. The library, founded by merchants in 1820—before there was a public … Continue reading →

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