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.

The Substance Abuser’s Wife

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Peter Selgin

In choosing her subject, it’s not a bad idea for the memoirist to imagine that many others in her audience have undergone the same or a similar experience, and to write with that in mind. Any assumption to the contrary … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Your First Page | 3 Comments

Memoir, or Autobiography?

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Peter Selgin

Ask four people the difference between a memoir and an autobiography and odds are you’ll get four different answers. For Gore Vidal a memoir is “how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history.” Will Rogers put it … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Your First Page | 5 Comments

Dead Baby Stories

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Peter Selgin

In his famous introduction to “The Nigger of the Narcissus,” Joseph Conrad describes his task as a fiction writer thus: “. . . to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, above all, to make you see.” He might … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Your First Page | Leave a comment

Up in a Tree

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Peter Selgin

From up in a dogwood tree a young girl watches her mother weed a garden, while down on the ground below her less tree-worthy friend Peggy watches. This opening scene from a story evoking a young girl’s world, with its … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized, Your First Page | 3 Comments