Peter Selgin (born 1957) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, editor, and illustrator. Selgin is currently the Viebranz Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
Peter Selgin was born on February 15, 1957 in Bethesda, MD. A son of Italian American immigrants, he grew up in Bethel, Connecticut, and attended Bethel High School. From an early age, he showed considerable talent in visual art and theater, going on to attend the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he studied film, theater and visual art, before turning to writing. After stints in community theater, he later attended Bard College, and earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from Western Connecticut State University. For years, between writing plays and stories, he worked as a visual artist...including as a caricaturist, illustrator, and painter. Nerve damage to his hand from a dog attack in 1981 temporarily sidelined his career. Selgin's injury and its aftermath are the subject of the Best American Essay "Dead to Rights: Confessions of a Caricaturist."
Since earning his Master of Fine Arts degree from the New School University in New York City in 2005, he has taught creative writing at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, GA, Montclair State University in NJ, and New York University, among other universitites and colleges. He has also taught creative writing at various community organizations including the Gotham Writers' Workshop, The Center for Fiction (formerly, the Mercantile Library for Fiction), and the Bronx Writers' Center, among others. For several summers, he has organized and led a week-long creative writing workshop in Vitorchiano, Italy.
Selgin is currently the Viebranz Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
Selgin is also the editor of Alimentum: The Literature of Food, a literary journal devoted exclusively to food themed poetry, prose, and creative nonfiction.
His brother, George Selgin is a professor of economics at the University of Georgia. His father, Paul Selgin, was an inventor whose numerous patents include many for optical measuring devices for use in manufacturing.
Selgin’s debut short story collection, Drowning Lessons, won the 2007 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published in 2008 by the University of Georgia Press. (4) His first novel, Life Goes to the Movies was a finalist for both the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Award for the Novel and was published in 2009 by Dzanc Books.
Non-Fiction:
Selgin is also the author of two non-fiction books on the craft of fiction writing, By Cunning & Craft, and 179 Ways to Save a Novel, both published by Writer's Digest Books. His first book of essays, Confessions of a Left-Handed Man, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press / Sightline Books in the Fall of 2011.
Plays:
As a playwright, Selgin has been a three-time finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Award. His stage drama, A God in the House, based on Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his “suicide machine,” was presented there in 1991, and subsequently optioned for off-Broadway. A God in the House also won the Mill Mountain Theatre New Plays Competition (1990). Night Blooming Serious, another full-length drama, won the Charlotte Repertory New Plays Festival Competition (1993). (5)
Visual Art:
Selgin's illustrations and paintings have been featured in The New Yorker, Gourmet, Outside, Fine Gardening, San Francisco, Boston, Forbes, U.S. Art, American Illustration, Time-Out New York, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as NPR's Weekend Edition, Fox's Good Day New York, and CNBC's Great Stuff. As a commercial artist, he storyboarded several motion picture scenes, including the gargoyle special effects sequences in Tales from the Darkside.
Children's Books:
Selgin has also written and illustrated several picture books for children, including, S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic (2)
