While a first year law student at the University of Buffalo I met Anthony Burgess, then a visiting professor of literature, who read several short stories and a novel in progress, and advised me to think seriously about quitting law school to write full-time. I applied for and was granted a two-year leave of absence, but passed it up at the last minute to complete my degree.

I opened my own trial practice in Manhattan, and worked on my first novel during morning and evening hours. That book was too esoteric and too poorly crafted for the hardcover fiction market. As a result, I decided to close my office and write full-time. Trading a lucrative lifestyle for a bohemian one never seemed a hard choice for me, but I soon learned that living a writer's life does not a writer make. You must also learn the craft. My succeeding novels were completed quickly and were better written, but were still unpolished. I began writing short stories to better focus on the craft.

After several years I returned to the novel form, and completed another book, and workshopping the book convinced me that my craft needed a serious upgrade. I entered the Creative Writing MFA program at The City College of New York, where I learned from writers like Frederic Tuten, Linsey Abrams, Mark Jay Mirsky, and J. Fred Reynolds.

My MFA thesis was Part I of a novel-in-progress. I am an associate editor of FICTION, the literary magazine founded in 1972 by Mark Jay Mirsky and his colleagues Donald Barthelme and Max Frisch. I am now teaching Literature and Creative Writing at City College and Lehman College, at the Bard College Harlem Clemente Course for the Humanities, and at Gotham Writers' Workshop.

My fiction has appeared in the following publications:

-Mean Yellow Jacket, Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot by Jane K. Cleland
(Writer's Digest Books, 2016)
-Iguana, Fiction Magazine (online edition), 2010
-Truth and Truth, Sulphur River Literary Review, 2004
-Libby's Foot, RiverSedge, 2002;
-Knowledge and Illusion, Prairie Winds, 2002;
-Relativity, River Oak Review, 2001;
-Past Light and Cold, Lynx Eye, 2000;
-Four Pairs of Shoes, Folio, 1999;
-Three Men of God, South Dakota Review, 1999;
-My Stranger, The Licking River Review, 1999;
-Libby's Foot, Nebo, 1999;
-Mean Yellow Jacket, Reader's Break, 1998;

(These stories and novel excerpts are reprinted in on this site. Use the "Short Stories" link above to navigate to individual stories.)
 

Email: gd at gdpeters dot com