Happy Short Story Month 2012! Once again, we’ll be celebrating short stories all month here at Fiction Writers Review:

• Reviews of fantastic story collections
• Interviews with short story writers like Lysley Tenorio, Ben Fountain, and Laura Maylene Walter
• The return of our popular “Stories We Love” blog posts: writers on the stories that inspire them—and why
• Book of the Week giveaways highlighting short story collections
• Writing prompts to get you started on pieces of your own
• The 2012 Collection Giveaway Project—chances to win FREE short story collections from writing blogs all over the internet
• And more!

We think short stories are an art form of their own, not a lesser form of fiction. They may be small, but as with flowers, sometimes their tininess makes them more amazing. Check back here every day in May and help us celebrate short fiction in all its forms.

Image: AWP

We here at Fiction Writers Review are excited to hit AWP and catch up with our friends and contributors.

All throughout the conference, you can find us at our Bookfair table (N16)—come by and say hi!

And here’s a partial list of FWR-related events:

Thursday, March 1st:

• 12 pm – “Beyond the Workshop”: Contributor Margaret Lazarus Dean and other panelists explore new ways of teaching creative writing.  (Private Dining Room 2, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor)
• 7 pm – University of Michigan Reception: Contributor Valerie Laken reads along with Darcie Dennigan.  (Marquette, Hilton Chicago Hotel 3rd Floor<)

Friday, March 2nd:

• 9 am – “From Question to Quest”: Redefining Creative Nonfiction in the Field: A panel including FWR Editor-in-chief Jeremiah Chamberlin and friend of FWR Jesmyn Ward. (Astoria, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor)
• 1:30 pm – “Reinventing Realism: The Craft of Alice Munro”: Panel discussion including contributor Michael Byers.
• 2:30 pm – Book signing with National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward: We’ll have copies of Salvage the Bones for sale, too.  (FWR bookfair table, N16)
• 8:30 pm – Reading and Conversation with Esmeralda Santiago and Jesmyn Ward: Come hear two of this year’s National Book Award winners! (Grand Ballroom, Chicago Hilton Hotel, 2nd Floor)

Saturday, March 3rd:

• 12 pm – “Culture Survives Scott Walker: Milwaukee Writes and Milwaukee Reads”: Panel of four nationally known fiction writers, including FWR contributor Valerie Laken. (Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, 4th Floor)
• 4:30 pm – “Michigan at Thirty: An Alumni Reading” Contributing Editor Natalie Bakopoulos will be reading along with other recent graduates.

Contributors, if we missed your event, let us know  in the comments below, and we’ll add it to the list!

We know our contributors are amazing, and we’re always thrilled when the rest of the world notices, too.  So we’re delighted to tell you what some of our talented contributors have been up to beyond FWR’s pages.

The latest news, in no particular order:

• Anne Barnhill’s debut novel, At the Mercy of the Queen, released Jan 3 and has been receiving good reviews from Publishers Weekly, Amazon, and Goodreads.  Her poetry chapbook, Coal, Baby, will be released from Finishing Line Press in late February.
• Valerie Nieman recently completed a residency at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities.
• Daniel Wallace was the Toni Brown scholarship winner for the Winter Getaway Writing Conference (in New Jersey).  He was also one of ten finalists in Narrative Magazine’s fall fiction contest.
• FWR’s Blog Editor, Celeste Ng, was the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her short story “Girls, At Play,” originally published in the Bellevue Literary Review.
• Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus’s short-story collection, Quiet Americans (Last Light Studio) was named a Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for 2012; the medal is given “to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature.” Quiet Americans was also recognized as a Notable Book of 2011 by The Jewish Journal and as a Top 10 Small-Press Book for 2011 by Shelf Unbound magazine.  And a new story by Erika, “Fidelis,” was commissioned by National Public Radio for NPR’s 2011 “Hanukkah Lights” broadcast.
• Editor-in-Chief, Jeremiah Chamberlin, and Contributing Editor Joshua Bodwell both had essays appear in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Poets & Writers: “Inspired Revision” (Chamberlin) and “You Are What You Read: The Art of Inspired Reading Lists (Bodwell).
• Jeremiah also has an interview with Laura van den Berg in the Winter 2012 issue of Glimmer Train and a profile of Donovan Hohn in LSA Magazine.
• Director of Marketing and Development, Michael Rudin, had his newest essay, “From Hemingway to Twitterature: The Short and Shorter of It,” appear in the Journal of Digital Publishing.
• Contributing Editor Natalie Bakopoulos’s debut novel, The Green Shore, was one of only six titles selected for Simon & Schuster’s 2012 Fiction Sampler, alongside new books by Carol Anshaw, John Irving, Chris Cleave, Vaddey Ratner, and Enid Shomer. The book will be published on June 5th of this year.
• Most recently, Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s profile of the Cuirt International Festival in Galway, Ireland, appears in the current issue of Poet’s & Writers, which came out last week.

Congratulations, all!  We’re proud to call you FWR contributors.

HUGE congratulations to friend of FWR Jesmyn Ward, who just won the 2011 National Book Award for fiction for her novel Salvage the Bones!

In reviewing Ward’s novel, Ron Charles wrote in the Washington Post,

When the finalists for the National Book Award in Fiction were announced last month, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was among those critics grumbling about the obscurity of some of the authors (Andrew Krivak?), even some of the publishers (Lookout Books?). [...]

I’m happy to eat my words. And my spinach. I’ve just read another one of the so-called obscure finalists, “Salvage the Bones ,” the second book from Alabama writer Jesmyn Ward, and it’ll be a long time before its magic wears off.

You can read an interview with Jesmyn right here on Fiction Writers Review. Congratulations again, Jesmyn!

Image: National Writers Series

On Thursday, October 20, the Traverse City National Writers Series will host An Evening with Jeffrey Eugenides at 8pm at the Lars Hockstad Auditorium in Traverse City, Michigan.  The evening will conclude with a reception and book signing with the author.

Image: National Writers Series

Here at Fiction Writers Review, we’re very excited about this reading–and not just because our own Jeremiah Chamberlin will be hosting, speaking with Eugenides about his new novel The Marriage Plot as well as his life and other work. The Traverse City National Writers Series’ events aren’t your typical readings.  Explains the organization’s website:

In 2009, Doug Stanton, wife Anne Stanton (investigative journalist and writer for the Northern Express) and attorney Grant Parsons founded the TC National Writers Series to support the education of area young people planning to study writing in college.

Rather than a typical book reading/signing series, the trio envisioned a unique “dinner party” format that would bring the nation’s best writers and storytellers in for a night of great conversation, lively entertainment and audience interaction. Proceeds from the series would go into a dedicated scholarship fund that would support area high school students in pursuing writing careers.

Net proceeds from the organization’s events are donated to a dedicated scholarship fund with the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation.

We’re delighted to represent such a fantastic author and to partner with a great nonprofit that supports young writers. You can learn more about the event here, and for those of you lucky enough to be in the area, tickets are still available and can be purchased online for $20.

Further resources:

• Get a glimpse of Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot in this interview on NPR.
• Find out more about the National Writers Series and their mission.
• Co-founder Doug Stanton is the author of the best-selling non-fiction books Horse Soldiers and In Harm’s Way. Visit the author’s website for more information.

Approximately one hour ago, the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards were announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s morning radio program, Think Out Loud. The event took place in front of a live audience at the new Literary Arts Center in Portland, Oregon, at approximately 9am Pacific Time. And we’re pleased to announce that some of our favorite fiction titles last year have been selected. Congratulations to:

Fiction:

We’re proud to have featured work on several of these authors and their books:

Here are the nominees in the other three categories. Congratulations!

Nonfiction:

Poetry:

Young People’s Literature:

In the introduction to his recent interview with McMahon, J. Caleb Winters describes the subject of this new novel. He writes:

In Tyler McMahon’s debut novel, How the Mistakes Were Made, Laura Loss comes of age in the 1980s hardcore punk scene, the jailbait bassist in her brother Anthony’s band. While on a reluctant tour through Montana, Laura meets Sean and Nathan, two talented young musicians dying to leave their small mountain town. With these two men, Laura forms the Mistakes, and at the height of their fame, the volatile bonds between the three explode. Hated by the fans she’s spent her life serving, Laura finally tells her side of how the Mistakes were made.

During their conversation, McMahon recalls the paranoia of Cold War America, shares his own experiences touring with a band, and discusses the influences of this new novel. In response to a question about how the Cold War shaped the book’s protagonist, Punk Rock, and the themes of the novel, McMahon says the following:

All my earliest memories involve being terrified by some sort of nuclear apocalypse. I would have nightmares about it all the time. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and cry about it. So many childhood sleepovers ended with somebody’s older brother or sister whispering about how the bombs worked—if they used keys or buttons, if the president could launch them from his limo, how big they were and what shape they had. There was something on television back then, maybe one of those Amazing Stories bits, in which all the nukes were fired and a little boy runs outside and screams “Stop!” and the missiles all froze in midair. I remember identifying with that at a young age.

For many years, I thought I was just paranoid or a coward. Then one day when I was in my twenties, my father told me a story about a college lecture he attended. I believe they were talking about the Cuban missile crisis. The professor was absolutely certain there would be a nuclear war between the US and the USSR in the next few years. My dad talked about how unsettling that was. After that, I realized it was a symptom of an age, not just my own psychological flaw.

I definitely think the nuclear threat was a significant factor in punk rock’s genesis, and in American hardcore especially. That’s a position I argued for often when I taught my rock history class to undergrads. I’ll concede that it might be too neat of a thesis, as a lot of bad stuff happened to the US in the 80s. But in the case of punk, it rings true.

When I began writing in Laura’s voice, she immediately had this tough, two-fisted, tomboy exterior. It became doubly important to give her some kind of soft underbelly, an inner frailty. The fear of nuclear weapons felt like a good fit. It helped place those flashbacks, both in a specific time and in D.C.

To read J. Caleb Winters’s complete interview with the author, please click here.

• We’re honored to count Tyler McMahon as one of our regular contributors here on Fiction Writers Review, and so it’s a particular pleasure to feature his new novel. For some of his most recent work for us, please read his “Stories We Love” post on Eric Rickstad’s story “Ballerina, Ballerina.”
• You can also read his reviews of Alan Heathcock’s debut collection Volt and Joshua Mohr’s debut novel Some Things That Meant the World to Me.
• Check out Tyler’s website for more information, including upcoming author events.
• You can also win one of three signed copies of this book, which we’ll be giving away next week to three of our Twitter followers.

To be eligible for this giveaway (and all future ones), simply click over to Twitter and “follow” us (@fictionwriters).

To all of you who are already fans, thank you!

As the new academic year revs up and our teaching-focused month winds down, we here at FWR want to take a moment and say a huge THANK YOU to our wonderful summer editorial intern, Nicole Aber. All summer long, Nicole provided invaluable assistance behind the scenes, as well as writing up some excellent posts for the blog (see below). No matter what challenge we threw at her, she handled it with aplomb! This year, Nicole will be Managing News Editor at the Michigan Daily, and we know she’ll be amazing there as well.

Dear readers, please join us in thanking Nicole so much for all her hard work this summer and wishing her all best in the upcoming year. And stay tuned–if we’re lucky, Nicole may write more blog posts in the future.

If you missed any of Nicole’s excellent blog posts, you can read them in our archives:

• On the postcard campaign to save NYPL funding–and one tween’s emphatic response: “How to save a library? With postcards–and some attitude“
• On how a venerable publishing institution is adapting to the digital world: “Columbia Publishing Course takes on digital publishing”
• On Facebook’s possible plans for publishing: “Facebook: the next ebook publisher?“
• On whether the recent self-publishing phenoms are the new norm: “Self-Publishing: A fad, or the next American Idol?“

So throughout the month of September, we’re devoting all the content at FWR to the art of teaching writing, and the teaching of writing as an art. (What better way to mark back to school season?)

We began our teaching theme on Monday with Anna Leahy’s wonderful review essay “The Future of Literary Citizenship,” and we continue our features today with Steven Wingate’s conversation with famed writing instructor Brett Lott in an interview entitled “Write From Your Own Chair.”

We’ve also begun a new blog series we’re calling “Under the Influence.” As we did in May with our “Stories We Love” posts, we’ve asked our contributors to highlight the influence a particular individual or class has had on their writing life. Whether it’s a workshop experience, an important teaching tip, an inspiring book, or an invaluable bit of advice from a mentor, we wanted to hear how our writers have been shaped by other writers–directly or indirectly.

We’ve posted our first two this week:

From the humorous to the serious, we’re happy to honor those who’ve influenced us along the way.

Additionally, we’ll be having a series of guest blog posts by writers and teachers of writing whose ideas on craft and criticism have shaped their students and the broader literary communities alike. Yesterday we published Richard Goodman’s essay “Writers Writing About Writing: The Dirty Little Secret, in which Goodman recommends his favorite craft texts: ones written by “authors whose books on writing are welcoming, openhearted, and humble. Whose books give out excellent, practical advice. And, most importantly, whose books are well written.” In the forthcoming weeks we’ll have guest blog posts by Peter Turchi, Kevin Haworth, and Robin Becker.

Finally, each Friday, we’ll offer a writing exercise or prompt to help your students—or you!—kick off the new school year. Look for our first September “Get Writing” prompt on the blog tomorrow. (And if you need an exercise NOW for your first week of class, check out our past “Get Writing” exercises.)

• Mary Stewart Atwell’s interview with Mark McGurl (author of The Program Era)
• “Where Are We Going Next? A Conversation about Creative Writing Pedagogy” (Pt. 1), with Cathy Day, Anna Leahy, and Stephanie Vanderslice
• “Where Are We Going Next? A Conversation about Creative Writing Pedagogy” (Pt. 2), with Cathy Day, Anna Leahy, and Stephanie Vanderslice

The editors and contributors of Fiction Writers Review cordially invite you to celebrate Short Story Month with them. Details below!

Who:
Short story lovers everywhere

When:
The entire month of May—coverage starts Sunday, May 1. As part of the celebration, we’ll have special weekend posts, too!

Where:
All across the site, from reviews to interviews to the blog

What:
Here’s just a preview of the content we’ll be featuring:

• Reviews of fantastic story collections
• Interviews with master short story writers like Mary Gaitskill and Robert Boswell
• “Stories We Love” blog posts – writers on the stories that inspire them—and why
• Book of the Week and Journal of the Week giveaways highlighting short stories
• Special weekend content – short stories online for instant reading gratification, plus writing prompts to get you started on pieces of your own
• The Collection Giveaway Project – chances to win FREE short story collections from writing blogs all over the internet
• And more!

Why:
Because we believe that short stories are more than “five-finger exercises,” workshop fodder, or writerly warm-ups. Because we see short stories as art forms in their own right, not lesser siblings of the novel. Because we admire how short stories can contain entire worlds in the span of just a few pages. Because, in short, we believe short stories are worth celebrating, and we hope that you do too.