Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2010

Shop Talk |

One (Love) Story

by Celeste Ng

Yet another reason to read literary journals: they could help you find your soulmate. One Story has a great story up on its blog about how the magazine brought a couple together: Outside the Harvard Bookstore we prepared to part, making the non-committal noises of people who are never going to see each other again. Misery mixed in with relief. Within a few minutes this poetic, literary woman was going to vanish into the bright lights of the bookstore. The kind of woman I’d been dreaming about my whole life. But that’s what it was: a dream. Before she left, […]


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A Valentine for 2009 from Brian Bartels

by Brian Bartels

Editors’ Note: In early January, Anne and Jeremy wrote our Contributors to hear about their favorite books from 2009, the results of which we’ve compiled as a feature for Valentine’s Day. But we enjoyed the punchy letter Contributor Brian Bartels sent us so much that we decided it deserved its own post. Happy Valentine’s Day! A Letter of Apology: First off, you look great today. No lie. But it’s a sad day for me. If I may borrow the words of Kris Kristofferson, I would trade all of my tomorrow’s for another yesterday. I wish I could get 2009 back, but […]


Essays |

A Valentine: Books We Loved in 2009

by Anne Stameshkin

Every book we feature on Fiction Writers Review has won the admiration of our reviewers. But because it’s a new year, and it’s award season, and today is the official holiday of love, we asked our contributors to tell us which books of 2009 they most adored, cherished, and crushed on. What we received often transcended mere lists; writers shared why these certain books affected them, woke them up, even made them jealous. So in addition to the “favorites” that received the most votes, we’ve also included some of these endorsements and mini-reviews. Most selections are arranged by genre (Novel, Story Collection, etc.), and then there are less conventional categories–like Book You Loved But Would Be Embarrassed to Be Caught Reading.


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New Yorker Caption Contest

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Cody Walker, friend of FWR and author of the fantastic poetry collection Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser Press, 2008), has just had his caption selected as a finalist for the New Yorker’s most recent cartoon contest. Congratulations! To vote for Cody’s caption, or to see the other two finalists, click here. Walker, who was voted The Populist Poet of Seattle, Washington, now teaches writing at the University of Michigan. Reviewing Shuffle and Breakdown, the Seattle Times wrote: It’s not every poet who can pull off a book that combines a high-brow reference to Walt Whitman (the title, Shuffle and Breakdown, is taken from Leaves […]


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Titles to Avoid

by Celeste Ng

Trimalchio in West Egg. A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis. Catch-18. Even the greats struggle with their titles sometimes, toying with titles like these before settling on The Great Gatsby, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Catch-22. So what makes a good title–or a bad one? Author and teacher Eric Puchner has some thoughts in GlimmerTrain’s latest bulletin: So, based on years of teaching, I’ve compiled the following list of types of TITLES TO AVOID. (Note: some of the examples below are real titles, from good stories.) The Purely Descriptive: “One Early Morning in Topeka at Dawn” The Lofty Abstraction, AKA the Bad […]


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On (Non-Social) Reading

by Celeste Ng

From to Oprah’s Book Club to Goodreads, reading has become a more social activity than ever before. But what about those people who still like to curl up with a book–alone? The New York Times examines the private reader: Particularly with the books we adore most, a certain reader wants to preserve the experience for reflection, or even claim the book as hers and hers alone. Lois Lowry, an author of books for children and a two-time winner of the Newbery for “Number the Stars” and “The Giver,” said she recently read that Katherine Paterson, also a two-time Newbery winner […]


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2010 PEN/O. Henry Prize Winners Announced

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

The official list for the 2010 Pen/O. Henry Prize winners was released recently and we are pleased to announce that two FWR Contributors will have work in this year’s anthology: Natalie Bakopoulos, whose story “Fresco, Byzantine” was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Tin House, and Preeta Samarasan, whose story “Birch Memorial” was published in Issue 6 of A Public Space. Congratulations! The anthology, which is edited by Laura Furman, features Junot Díaz, Yiyun Li, and Paula Fox as this year’s prize jury. Here is the complete list of authors and selected stories: “Them Old Cowboy Songs” Annie Proulx “Clothed, Female […]


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The Death of the Slushpile

by Celeste Ng

The slush pile: Beginning writers get lost in it. Beginning editors sift through it. The Wall Street Journal points out some of the effects of its disappearance: As writers try to find an agent—a feat harder than ever to accomplish in the wake of agency consolidations and layoffs—the slush pile has been transferred from the floor of the editor’s office to the attaché cases of representatives who can broker introductions to publishing, TV and film executives. The result is a shift in taste-making power onto such agents, managers and attorneys. Theirs are now often the first eyes to make a […]


Reviews |

The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk

by T. M. De Vos

Like most of us, Orhan Pamuk’s narrator Kemal rushes through his happiest moments in a preoccupied haze, only appreciating them in hindsight. A true materialist, he seeks to recreate them through his collections of mementos large and small, iconic and insignificant. His “museum” in The Museum of Innocence (Knopf, 2009) is a diorama not only of Kemal’s own nostalgia, but of Turkey itself in the late 1970s.


Shop Talk |

The Lost Booker Prize

by Celeste Ng

The Booker Prize has announced the Lost Booker Prize, intended to honor books published in 1970, the only year since 1968 in which when no prize was given. The Booker Prize was created in 1968 as a retrospective prize – that is, honoring books published prior to the award year. Then, in 1971, two changes were made in the Booker rules: the Booker became a prize for the best novel published in the same year as the award, and the month in which the award was given changed from April to November. As a result of the new rules, books […]




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