Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Midwestern Lit’

Interviews |

Hard Truths from Vulnerable Places: An Interview with Melissa Fraterrigo

“I’m honored to be a lifelong Midwesterner and to write and think about place with central allegiance”: Melissa Scholes Young talks with Melissa Fraterrigo about her story collection, Glory Days.


Interviews |

The World Is Made of Stories: An Interview with Alan Heathcock

Mary Stewart Atwell talks with Alan Heathcock as part of her interview series with writers of rural fiction, undertaken in partnership with The Art of the Rural. The two discuss Heathcock’s debut collection, Volt, as well as his Midwestern influences, film, politics, and more.


Shop Talk |

Stories We Love: “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country,” by William Gass

“William Gass’s ‘In the Heart of the Heart of the Country’ stands as an answer for what it means to write from the Midwest. Told in thirty-six discrete sections, this story is a devastatingly gorgeous meditation on loss and the rhythms of the Midwestern landscape.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Lighthouse Road, by Peter Geye

Our current feature is Peter Geye’s new novel, The Lighthouse Road, which was published by Unbridled Books in October. He is also the author of Safe from the Sea. Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He’s also worked as a bartender, banker, bookseller, copywriter, and cook. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he continues to live there with his wife and three children. In the introduction to his recent review of The Lighthouse Road, Contributor Aaron Cance writes: Set at the cusp of […]


Shop Talk |

First Looks, September 2012: Tell Everyone I Said Hi and BASS

Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. I can’t say I wasn’t warned that Chad Simpson’s essay, “An Epilogue to the Unread”—which connects the illness and passing of Simpson’s mother, her love for reading, examples of generosity in our […]