“Darkly exuberant and completely riveting,” and “a hall-of-mirrors metafictional masterpiece,” are reviews that perfectly describe Peter Selgin’s newest book, “Duplicity.” 

Selgin will be the featured speaker at the “Meet the Author” combination live and online event at Georgia Writers Museum in Eatonton on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. 

Donations to the museum are appreciated and help keep programs like this free to the public. 

Selgin will speak about “Duplicity,” a finalist for the 2020 Elixir Press Book Prize, the 2020 Steel Toe Boots Book Prize, and the 2019 CRAFT First Chapter Contest. Advanced registration is requested online at www.georgiawritersmuseum.org for this intriguing and entertaining event.

“Duplicity” begins with the character Stewart Detweiler “dispatched by their mother to learn why his estranged twin brother Gregory (or Brock Jones, Ph.D., as he’s known to fans of his bestselling self-help book, “Coffee, Black”) has disappeared. Stewart drives 1,500 miles to find his twin hanging from a ceiling beam in their deceased father’s lakeside A-frame. But instead of reporting him dead, Stewart decides to become him. As he sees it, he’s not taking his brother’s life; he’s saving it. In turn, he will at last gain an audience for his novel-in-perpetual-progress, the plot of which bears an uncanny resemblance to this one. At first, Stewart’s plan goes smoothly. But before long, the motives behind his brother’s suicide emerge, pointing to intrigue, extortion, and desperate measures taken with disastrous results. The bonds of family; success and failure; philosophy and quantum mechanics; the ways in which we can — and cannot — rewrite our own lives: Duplicity weaves all these together while vivisecting its own genre.

Selgin is the winner of countless writing awards. His early book, “Drowning Lessons,” won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His later novel, “The Water Master,” won the 2011 William Faulkner-William Wisdom prize for best novel. His non-fiction book, “The Inventors,” was the 2017 winner of the Housatonic Book Award. 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,” won the Mill Mountain Theatre New Plays Competition (1990). Beyond writing, his illustrations and paintings have been featured in The New Yorker, Gourmet, Fine Gardening, The Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.

Selgin attended Pratt Institute, where he studied film, theater, and visual art. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from Western Connecticut State University and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the New School University. As of 2021, he is an associate professor in the MFA program at Georgia College & State University. He previously taught creative writing at Antioch College, Montclair State University, and New York University.

To register for the event or for more information visit www.georgiawritersmuseum.org.