Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2010

Shop Talk |

From Hemingway's portrait to lit-tats

by Lee Thomas

I recently stumbled upon Poets & Writers’ “Clips” section, “a curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.” It’s an interesting, eclectic cross-section of video that touches on the literary, but isn’t always quite so literal. There’s a clip of photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s recalling what it was like to shoot Ernest Hemingway’s portrait for the cover of Life magazine in 1952, a Notre Dame student performing his musical homage to Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, a timelapse video of artist Mike Stilkey assembling an installation with books as his sculptural medium. Or […]


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Waccamaw

by Lee Thomas

It’s been out for a while, but I’ve been perusing Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6. The biannual, online journal out of Coastal Carolina University includes fiction by Julie Babcock, Sarah McCraw Crow, Billy O’Callaghan, Nick Ripatrazone, and Jennifer Spiegel, along with poetry, essay, and a long interview with poet Natasha Trethewey. There’s also a transcript of Trethewey’s Emory University Distinguished Faculty Lecture, which she delivered earlier this year. In it, she observes: It seems to me that all writers, at some point, must respond to a question—posed either by themselves or someone else—in order to answer, as […]


Shop Talk |

The Fiction Project

by Lee Thomas

Like to doodle in the margins of your stories? Sketch in the park until inspiration for a story strikes? The folks behind Art House Co-Op – out of the Brooklyn Art Library – who came up with the traveling Sketchbook Project, that sends themed sketchbooks around the country on exhibit, have just announced The Fiction Project. Like The Sketchbook Project, anyone can participate, for the $25 entry fee they’ll send you a book to fill: The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. Add your voice to this year’s […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week Giveaway: How They Were Found, by Matt Bell (Redux)

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Matt Bell’s How They Were Found, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Suzanne Buckman-Beach, Melissa Scholes Young, and Thomas Gagnon. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of the book, signed by the author. This week we’re also featuring Matt Bell’s How They Were Found. No, it’s not Groundhog Day. As you may have noticed, FWR is getting a bit of a face-lift. Or, rather, we’re in the process of completing a range of digital […]


Shop Talk |

Figment.com – self-publishing 2.0?

by Lee Thomas

With gangbusters press coverage on Monday, Figment.com launched a fiction-sharing site. Co-founded by Dana Goodyear, staff writer at The New Yorker, and Jacob Lewis, a former Managing Editor at The New Yorker, the site sets up its mission like this: Figment is an online community to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Follow your literary obsessions. Find fans for your work. Read the latest by your favorite authors. Vote up the best stories. Embrace your inner book nerd. Read. Write. Procrastinate. Repeat. Whatever you’re into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can […]


Shop Talk |

Ode to Barton Fink

by Lee Thomas

I first watched Barton Fink years ago in Chicago, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. It’s one of the Coen brothers’ lesser-watched films. John Turturro plays the title character, hired to write a Hollywood script, and his rendition of writer’s block still makes me want to crawl out of my skin. The wallpaper peels, his neighbor Charlie at the Hotel Earle (a genius turn by John Goodman) interrupts him, Barton loses himself in a picture of a woman on the beach that hangs on his hotel room wall. People may debate the symbols of the movie itself, but […]


Shop Talk |

This Saturday: Biblioball 2010

by Michael Rudin

Biblioball 2010 from Desk Set on Vimeo. ‘Tis the season, and that means New York’s annual Biblioball has arrived! The event occurs on December 4th and those of you who have attended before know what to expect: not just a winter formal for the “well-read and well-attired,” but an incredible way to support Literacy for Incarcerated Teens. Starting at Brooklyn’s The Bell House at 8 pm and going into the wee hours of the morning, attendees have plenty to look forward to: In addition to these food and drink items, Happy Hour ticket holders can mingle with local literary stars, […]


Shop Talk |

A story with that cardigan?

by Lee Thomas

In keeping with the shorter nights of winter, and later retail hours of the holiday season, throughout December Anthropologie will offer Bedtime Stories Reading Hour for kids at locations across the country. Now, I’m normally wary of attempts to lure me into stores – but this hits home. I remember an infamous visit to the department store that ended in a trip to the dentist for my brother when he careened into a clothing rack during a game of chase. Yep, we were those kind of kids. Our mother would have been so grateful for a story hour to keep […]




Literary Partners