Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for November, 2013

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Gravesend, by William Boyle

This week’s feature is William Boyle‘s debut novel, Gravesend, which will be released next month by Broken River Books. Boyle’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Mississippi Noir (Akashic Books), L.A. Review of Books, Salon, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, The Rumpus, Hobart, and other magazines and journals. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and an M.F.A. from the University of Mississippi, where he now teaches. In the introduction to his recent interview with William Boyle, Alex Shakespeare describes Gravesend as a novel “firmly in the tradition of […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Everything Happens As It Does

This week’s feature is Albena Stambolova’s new novel, Everything Happens As It Does, translated from the Bulgarian by Olga Nikolova. Stambolova’s novel, which was published this month by Open Letter Books, was the 2013 winner of the Contemporary Bulgarian Fiction Contest from Open Letter Books at the University or Rochester, a project that is supported by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. She is also the author of two other novels: Hop-Hop the Stars, and An Adventure, to Pass the Time. She has also published a collection of short stories, Three Dots, and a psychoanalytical study on Marguerite Duras, Sickness in Death. […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Hypothetical Girl, by Elizabeth Cohen

This week’s feature is Elizabeth Cohen’s story collection The Hypothetical Girl, which was published by Other Press. Cohen is the author of The Family on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Love and Courage (Random House, 2004), which chronicles Cohen’s life raising her young daughter and taking care of her father as he struggles with Alzheimer’s disease. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is also the author of numerous collections of poetry, including What the Trees Said (2013) and The Economist’s Daughter (2011). She is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh and she […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Isle of Youth, by Laura van den Berg

This week’s feature is Laura van den Berg’s new collection The Isle of Youth, which releases today from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her debut collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award. For more information on Laura and her work, please visit: http://www.lauravandenberg.com/. In the introduction to her recent interview with the […]