Peter Selgin, author, has published essays and stories in numerous literary journals and magazines, including Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Northwest Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. His work has also appeared in anthologies such as Our Roots are Deep in Passion (Other Books), Writing Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Best American Essays 2006. His upcoming book is entitled By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers.

In addition to teaching at Gotham Writers Workshop in Manhattan, Montclair State University, and at the MFA Writing Program at Western Connecticut State University, Selgin is also the editor of Alimentum: The Literature of Food.

Selgin's children's book, S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic (Simon & Schuster, 1999), was a Scholastic Book Club selection and won the Lemme Award for Best Children's Book, 2000. As a playwright, Selgin has won the Mill Mountain New Plays Competition and the Charlotte Repertory New Play Festival Competition, and his drama, God in the House, was staged at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Competition.

An accomplished artist, Selgin's paintings and illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Gourmet, Italian Food and Wine, and The Wall Street Journal. He has exhibited his work in galleries throughout the United States, including New York City, where he has been represented by the Frank Miele Gallery and by the Bridgewater/Lustberger in Soho.

Photo © Peter Selgin

Derek Alger: I should probably start by congratulating you on your book By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers from Writers' Digest Books.

Peter Selgin: Thank you. The book grew directly out of my teaching, and out of the need for a book combining actionable advice with good prose. Most writing guides offer one or the other. John Gardner is readable and amusingly cranky, but often highfalutin and impractical. Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird is more intent on making readers laugh (which she does) than on dispensing technique. Then you have so-called "Nuts and Bolts" guides that are about as readable as the Honda owner's manual in my glove compartment. The challenge was to get technical, yet remain readable.

And to give lots of examples; you can't have too many examples in a book about writing.

DA: Did you know from an early age you wanted to be a writer?

PS: I started out as a visual artist whose grasp of the world was almost purely sensuous. I like telling of how in kindergarten, I'd present Mrs. Decker with crayon drawings of the Empire State Building lit-up at night, in appreciation of which she'd plant a kiss on my cheek. This, I like to think, launched me as an artist, and I have been seeking more of those kisses ever since. But I didn't start writing until many years later.

DA: You initially went to art school?

PS: I went to Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn. I like to draw; I was good at it. I had a prodigious grasp of perspective that let me render things photographically with devilish ease. I was like those autistic wunderkinds profiled by Dr. Oliver Sacks, who size up Winchester Cathedral at a glance and replicate it in pen or pencil. Only I wasn't autistic, I just had this ability. Unfortunately, it was all about surfaces. Like Monet, I was "just an eye." One day in studio class, Mr. Blaustein, my painting instructor, put it to me straight. "Know what you are, Selgin?" he said as he stood behind me, watching me paint. "You're an artistic illiterate." He had a heavy Bronx accent, so it sounded like "autistic illiterate." I was offended, but he was right. My paintings back then were all glib surface, eye-candy. Instant gratification without depth or struggle.