Translation gives those of us who are not linguistic polymaths access to the great books being written all over the planet. A good translation doesn’t simply convey the story being told – it pays attention to original voice of the author, picking up on nuance and subtleties.
The judges of the 2010 PEN Translation Prize [...]

In a Strange Room ­­chronicles Damon’s travels as he journeys from Greece, to various countries in Africa, to India. Traveling, in general, disorients. We are displaced from our normal locations, we are observing places that are not our own, and our minds constantly compare the new, foreign place with the familiar one. Like Rimbaud’s process of becoming a seer, the state of traveling might be a process by which we project toward the unknown by a derangement of the senses. To travel is to step into a sort of duality.

Andrew Porter is the author of The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was recently republished by Vintage. Each one of these critically acclaimed stories is beautifully paced and plotted–a veritable nesting box–and full of lovely sentences you’ll want to read aloud just for the pleasure of it.

In this interview, Porter discusses how crafting stories is like editing film; what particular advantages peripheral narrators can afford; and why it’s “completely surreal” to hear actors read from your work.

“I imagine the seasonally unspecified stories in Laura van den Berg’s What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us must be set in spring because spring is a time that makes me feel young, young as girls and in as much danger. And then there’s always this odd moment of realization that I am young and a girl and in some dangers. I’m still in too-close contact with boys I once loved, still prone to crying in public, still not aware of the dynamic personal lives of adults. Spring in the Midwest is about babies and hope and vitality, but it’s also about knowing that eventually a late frost is going to swing in out of no place and kill everything you haven’t collected in the shed. And I wanted the people in these stories locked up safe.”

Adam Haslett’s 2002 story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. His first novel, Union Atlantic, which focuses in part on unregulated trading, unethical banking, and the prospect of a massive economic collapse, was published this spring by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Kate Levin talks with the author about fiction meeting reality, the psychology of power, the responsibility of writers to capture the social and political context of an era, and exposing ourselves in our characters.

For those of you in New York, Idlewild Books will be hosting a launch party for the 2010 PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories Anthology this Saturday from 6-8pm. FWR is pleased to have two of its contributors represented in this year’s collection: Preeta Samarasan, whose story “Birch Memorial” was published in A Public Space, and Natalie [...]

“I don’t mind that when I’m interviewed I am speaking as a representative of biracial women. I’m heartened that people are interested. I do wonder, though, when the book is critiqued as being not enough about the biracial experience. To that criticism I say, Well, okay, but it’s not a position paper. It’s a story. [...] I have had a number of people “come out” to me, for lack of a better word, about their blended families, or about their grief, or about simply being a young person struggling against the labels, like geek or nerd, that they’d been assigned by peers. [...] They’ve connected their own stories to the stories I’ve told and suddenly feel empowered to talk about it.”

Spring submission season is upon us. Here is a selection of postings that we’ve received in the last few weeks from journals seeking work. Please feel free to add others in our comment field, or write us: fictionwritersreview@gmail.com

Submit Your Entry Now!
Short Fiction Contest 2010
Submissions will be accepted February 1st-February 28th, with the winner [...]

The Booker Prize has announced the Lost Booker Prize, intended to honor books published in 1970, the only year since 1968 in which when no prize was given.
The Booker Prize was created in 1968 as a retrospective prize – that is, honoring books published prior to the award year. Then, in 1971, two changes [...]

It’s with great pride that we announce that Christine Hartzler’s essay “Games Are Not About Monsters,” which FWR published in April of last year, was recently selected for inclusion in Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010 anthology.
Christine’s essay is a lyrical meditation on video games, the development of character, how we make meaning, and, of [...]