Peter Gelfan

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Peter Gelfan

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Born
New York, The United States
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Member Since
August 2012


Peter Gelfan is a novelist, screenwriter, book editor, and writing teacher. He was born in New York City, grew up in New Haven and the New York suburbs, and has lived in Spain, England, Florida, and Vermont.

He wrote the screenplay for Cargo, Les Hommes Perdus, which was produced and released in France in 2010. Found Objects, his debut novel, came out in 2013. His second novel, Monkey Temple, was published in February 2019. The first edition of his nonfiction book Hurling Words into Darkness: A Book Doctor's Dose of Brain Science for Writers was published in 2021; a revised second edition will be released in fall of 2022. He volunteers as a writing tutor in a New York City public high school.




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Average rating: 3.85 · 88 ratings · 35 reviews · 5 distinct worksSimilar authors
Found Objects

3.75 avg rating — 72 ratings — published 2013 — 5 editions
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Hurling Words into Darkness...

4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2021 — 2 editions
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Monkey Temple: A novel

4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings2 editions
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Hurling Words Into Darkness...

4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2021
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Monkey Temple

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More books by Peter Gelfan…

College Application Essays

Notes on Writing College Essays



A college essay isn’t just another writing assignment. A homework essay is practice. A college essay is the real thing: a piece of writing which will have an impact on the rest of your life. Think of it more as an audition or a job interview.
The college will judge your scholastic abilities on your test scores and grades. The main purpose of the essay is give the admi Read more of this blog post »
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Published on September 16, 2019 06:26

Peter’s Recent Updates

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The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
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This is the most important and, if I may risk using this term, potentially the most paradigm-shifting book I’ve read in years. Anyone at all interested in a sociological view of history and the current state of the world should read it.

A caveat: it i
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The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Stephen Brusatte
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A very interesting and informative history of the evolution of mammals from their early forerunners, which predated dinosaurs, up to our present time. What a journey that was, and still is. The author, a fossil hunter and professor, manages to intert ...more
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How Minds Change by David McRaney
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Especially in these times of extreme dogmatism to the right and left, and of angry political disagreements hyper-amplified by social media, this book is both important and useful. It isn’t about how to win a debate, convince someone that your ideas a ...more
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Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer
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This book consists of a series of standalone nontechnical scientific essays that explore the borderlines between what’s clearly alive, what might be, and what isn’t. The maybe-life substances and creatures (or non-creatures) are weird and fascinating ...more
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Fundamentals by Frank Wilczek
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This book sums up the current state of physics as regards the makeup and workings of the universe we appear to be living in. The final and perhaps apparently unnecessary clause of my first sentence is what makes this book different from other books o ...more
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Grit by Angela Duckworth
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This book provides what it promises: a well-researched analysis of grit, and guidance as to how to get it and/or instill it in others. It’s well written in conversational English: easy reading yet precise in meaning.

A weakness of the book, which she
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Critical Thinking by Stuart Hanscomb
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This book looks like and often reads like a textbook, complete with exercises at the end of chapters. But like its subject matter, it has some twists and paradoxes. To begin with, the topic itself has a paradoxical definition: critical thinking is th ...more
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Immune by Philipp Dettmer
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A very informative and useful book. The author makes the almost inscrutable immune system hazily understandable to those who haven’t been to med school—and that’s a huge step forward. The book takes in the whole system, not just one or two trendy com ...more
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The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber
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The last line of the book well sums up its gist: “We know, now, that we are in the presence of myths.” This exhilarating, iconoclastic work doesn’t so much proclaim a new version of humanity’s prehistoric development but rather shows that what we hav ...more
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The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber
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The last line of the book well sums up its gist: “We know, now, that we are in the presence of myths.” This exhilarating, iconoclastic work doesn’t so much proclaim a new version of humanity’s prehistoric development but rather shows that what we hav ...more
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