Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘awards’

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Call for Spring Submissions

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

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 announced in late spring. Submissions must be 1200 words or less. There is no entry fee. Louise Erdrich, winner of the 2009 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, will be the final judge. The Kenyon Review will publish the winning short story in the […]


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The Lost Booker Prize

by Celeste Ng

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 were made in the Booker rules: the Booker became a prize for the best novel published in the same year as the award, and the month in which the award was given changed from April to November. As a result of the new rules, books […]


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Christine Hartzler's Essay Selected for Best of the Web Anthology

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

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 course, monsters. Drawing from her own experience playing RPGs like Shadow of the Colossus, she asks us to consider how the best games in this genre–like the best literature–not only challenge us to confront ourselves, but can also give us a glimpse of enlightenment. […]


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WGA's 2009 Nominations for Best Video Game Writing

by Anne Stameshkin

Yesterday FWR published a very exciting essay by Michael Rudin on the history, future, and literary/artistic potential of video games. While this piece was in the publishing pipeline, the Writer’s Guild of America announced its 2009 nominations for best video game writing. The “destabilizing” narrative behind Modern Warfare 2, discussed in Rudin’s essay, was officially recognized by the WGA for its outstanding storytelling, earning one of the five nominee nods–and the final game Michael worked on at Activision, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, also received a nomination. Below is an excerpt from “Writing the Great American Novel Video Game”; click here to […]


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Eugene Cross wins 2009 Dzanc Prize

by Celeste Ng

Fiction writer and Penn State Erie lecturer Eugene Cross has won the 2009 Dzanc Prize. The $5,000 prize is based on a manuscript-in-progress as well as a proposal for a writing-related community service project. Dzanc writes: Cross was selected from more than 100 applicants for both the quality of his fiction writing, as well as his proposal to set up and run a progressive series of creative workshops for refugees from Nepal, Sudan and Bhutan, in Erie. For his community service, Cross will conduct three 4-month workshops in concurrence with an ESL class currently being taught. We at Dzanc found […]


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Powell's Puddly Awards

by Celeste Ng

Powell’s wants to know: what’s the best book you read in the past decade? Voting for the 2010 Puddly Awards (and the “Golden Galoshes” trophy) is now open. Nominate your favorite read of the ’00s and you could win a $250 Powell’s gift card or one of four $50 Powell’s gift cards. Current nominees range from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Voting ends January 31.


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Story Prize Finalists Announced

by Celeste Ng

This year’s finalists for The Story Prize have been announced, and the competition is, as usual, staggering: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton) Drift by Victoria Patterson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) Even more remarkable, as Story Prize director Larry Dark points out, these are all books by emerging authors: What’s particularly exciting is that all three are debuts–a first for The Story Prize. In fact, in the previous five years of the award, only 2 of 15 finalists were the authors’ first books: 2004/05 finalist The Circus […]


Interviews |

Elephants and Online Fiction: An Interview with Michael Czyzniejewski

Author of the recently published short story collection Elephants in Our Bedroom, Michael Czyzniejewski grew up in the Chicago suburb of Calumet City, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1995 with a degree in rhetoric, and two years later, he received an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University.


Reviews |

The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey

by Mary Westbrook

At the start of Samantha Harvey’s debut novel, The Wilderness, which won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize, Jake Jameson, the story’s aging protagonist, is high above the English moors, staring down from a biplane on a landscape he used to know. But when the sight of the pilot’s “thick neck” triggers a disturbing memory…Jake isn’t upset. He’s excited.The reason: Jake has Alzheimer’s. And so begins Harvey’s novel, which centers on Jake’s attempt to look back on his ordinary life through a near impenetrable fog.


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Survival Advice from NBA finalists

by Celeste Ng

GalleyCat attended the recent National Book Awards and asked attendees for tips on how aspiring writers can survive the recession. The two-minute video includes advice from fiction finalists Bonnie Jo Campbell and Marcel Theroux , YA finalists Rita Williams Garcia and Laini Taylor, poetry finalist Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and nonfiction finalist Sean B. Carroll.




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