Ever wonder how someone could wake up every morning next to George W. Bush and think, “Hey, I love that guy!”? Yeah, me too. Which is exactly why I couldn’t wait to read American Wife, in which Curtis Sittenfeld imagines the life of Laura Bush.
A new report called The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge praises literary fiction as an important resource for a global society. To quote the Guardian‘s Books Blog: A team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics claim that stories and their writers can do just as much as academics and policy researchers, perhaps even more, to explain and communicate the world’s problems. Fiction, they boldly venture, can be just as useful as fact. You can read the report in its entirety (including a recommended reading list) here.
Fellow NYCers and fans of Fiction Goddess Eudora Welty, this one’s for you. Today at 2 PM, curator Sean Corcoran will lead a tour (free with museum admission) of the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the Early 1930s. For more information on today’s event, read this, and to learn about the exhibit itself (which runs through February 16) and teaser photos, go here.
This is just a happy little note to say that FWR will be at AWP in February 2009; this year, the conference is in Chicago. We won’t have a table of our own or a listing in the program, but we will be operating in guerrilla-style from a corner of the Michigan MFA table, spreading the Fictional Word with mugs and T-shirts and business cards (and possibly a working laptop). I’ll be actively looking to make publisher contacts, to recruit writer-reviewers, to meet authors, and to boost readership. If you’re going to be at the conference, let me know if […]
In Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, the most sharply drawn, most enticing character is contemporary Beijing itself, its “cramped side streets where the walls were like the scales of fish–tall shelves tightly packed with pirated discs.” The city and the promise behind it sparkle in Guo’s descriptions, which are sharp, fresh, and free of clichéd exoticism.
FWR’s super-amazing designer Marissa is doing some site maintenance/improvement work this weekend (because she is the Patron Saint of Fiction). I want to assure readers who have emailed to say, “Help! A review is also listed on the blog!” (or similar) to have no fear; everything will be restored to its rightful place – and look even nicer – in the end. Thanks, Marissa!!
Cashore’s debut is an engaging, action-driven fantasy that will please young adult and adult readers alike. In a genre populated with Gossip Girls and A-Listers, Graceling‘s heroine Katsa–who struggles with a terrible gift–stands out for her strength, intelligence, and will to live life on her own terms.
This fascinating Atlantic article by psych professor Paul Bloom explores the idea that each of us has multiple selves vying for control of the body and mind they inhabit. It’s also a rational (yet somewhat radical) take on creativity; see p. 2 for related ruminations on fiction.
Thank you, Guardian! They published this on the eve of the election.
At least today, words can’t capture what this election day means to our country and to the entire world. We hosted a party, hollered and cheered with hoards of fellow Brooklynites in the streets till nearly dawn, yawped from the rooftops, hugged strangers, wept. It may be a few days before I come down from this real, real high and can think about fiction. OBAMA!!!
