Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Jennifer Solheim’

Essays |

Safe and Sound: The Indelible Narratives of Lucia Berlin

From the Archives: “Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Welcome Home alongside a new collection of Lucia Berlin’s short stories, Evening in Paradise, on the same day as the midterm elections last week. A knowing wink from the publisher to the politics that these books contain? Perhaps.”


Essays |

From Awareness to Feeling: The Art of Telling

Jennifer Solheim on the art of telling in Nathacha Appanah’s Tropic of Violence, examining how the author’s “use of perspective and authority might serve as an example of how writers can develop characters whose social identities are different from their own, in ways that are palpable, believable, and move beyond empathy.”


Interviews |

Open Secrets: An Interview with Carrie Messenger

“I love that short stories are tales—that you need to hold somebody’s attention the way you would if you were talking to them. With novels, it’s a Scheherazade situation, and you’re trying to get them to come back and stay.” Carrie Messenger talks with Jennifer Solheim about her debut collection, as well as fairy tales, Eastern European history, translation, and more.