Peter Selgin

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Peter Selgin

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Born
Bethesda, Maryland, The United States
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January 2009

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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 two children’s books. His stories and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies, including Glimmer Train Stories, Poets & Writers, The Sun, Slate, Colorado Review, Writers and Their Notebooks, Writing Fiction, and Best American Essays 2009. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man: An Artist’s Memoir, was recently published by the University of Iowa Press and was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. His latest novel, The Water Master, won this years’ Pirate’s Alley / Faulkner Society Prize, and his essay, The Kuhreihen Melod ...more

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Peter Selgin I jump in a lake.
Peter Selgin I suppose it makes you see things that other people don't see. Martin Amis called all good writing "a war against clichés." I think that's right. I th…moreI suppose it makes you see things that other people don't see. Martin Amis called all good writing "a war against clichés." I think that's right. I think being a writer makes you aware of all the clichés and received wisdom we live with, it helps you to see through deceptive surfaces. It's true that some of those surfaces mask things that may be unpleasant or ugly. But at least you know, or have a chance to know, what you're really looking at.(less)
Average rating: 4.1 · 493 ratings · 102 reviews · 23 distinct worksSimilar authors
By Cunning & Craft: Sound A...

4.16 avg rating — 153 ratings — published 2007 — 9 editions
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179 Ways to Save a Novel: M...

3.78 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 2010 — 5 editions
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Drowning Lessons: Stories

3.97 avg rating — 61 ratings — published 2008 — 5 editions
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The Inventors: A Memoir

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4.15 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 2016 — 4 editions
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Duplicity

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Confessions of a Left-Hande...

3.78 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 2011 — 4 editions
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Your First Page: First Page...

4.38 avg rating — 21 ratings2 editions
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Life Goes to the Movies

4.42 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 2009 — 6 editions
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A Boy's Guide to Outer Space

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Your First Page: First Page...

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COVER STORY #9: THE SUN ALSO RISES

Published by Scribner’s in 1926, the first edition featured a Hellenistic jacket design illustrated by Cleonike Damianekes. The illustration, printed in a medley of beiges and browns, depicts a loosely-robed, exhausted-looking woman inclined against an even more tired-looking tree, her head resting on her shoulder, her eyes closed, both shoulders and one thigh exposed, cupping a golde

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Published on June 18, 2019 04:30
Moonglow
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Alphabetical Diaries
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Moonglow by Michael Chabon
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Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
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The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis
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Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
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Atonement by Ian McEwan
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Quotes by Peter Selgin  (?)
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“Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.”
Peter Selgin, 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers

“Think of all the stories that would end before they begin if their characters gave careful consideration to the consequences of their actions.”
Peter Selgin, 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers




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