Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2010

Shop Talk |

Publishers Send Aid to Haiti

by Celeste Ng

They may be in dire financial straits, but several publishers are reaching out to Haiti anyway. GalleyCat reports that Random House is donating $100,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund and Partners in Health. Its parent corporation, Bertelsmann AG, is adding 100,000 euros, while Time/TIME Inc. is releasing a book on Haiti with proceeds to benefit earthquake victims. If you’re still looking for ways to donate, here are some options: SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief effort; it will appear on your phone bill SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 […]


Shop Talk |

Eugene Cross wins 2009 Dzanc Prize

by Celeste Ng

Fiction writer and Penn State Erie lecturer Eugene Cross has won the 2009 Dzanc Prize. The $5,000 prize is based on a manuscript-in-progress as well as a proposal for a writing-related community service project. Dzanc writes: Cross was selected from more than 100 applicants for both the quality of his fiction writing, as well as his proposal to set up and run a progressive series of creative workshops for refugees from Nepal, Sudan and Bhutan, in Erie. For his community service, Cross will conduct three 4-month workshops in concurrence with an ESL class currently being taught. We at Dzanc found […]


Shop Talk |

The Books People Steal

by Celeste Ng

Abbie Hoffman would be proud. *** In Harvard Bookstore, one of my favorite local indie bookstores, there’s a small, unobtrusive sign on the fiction shelf. For books by Bukowski and Kerouac, it says, please ask at the register. I couldn’t figure out why and finally asked one of the staff. “People tend to steal them,” she explained bluntly. As a horrible goody-two-shoes, the idea of stealing a book had never occurred to me. (And really? Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac? Okay, I do live in Cambridge.) In the New York Times, novelist Margo Rabb investigates the most-stolen books at independent […]


Essays |

Quotes & Notes: Gotta Serve Somebody: Writers and Academic Homes

by Steven Wingate

“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” — Flannery O’Connor

It’s hard to argue with your heroes, though it’s significantly easier after they’ve died. Flannery O’Connor—the first writer I wanted to be—refers in this quote to creative writing workshops, which were just becoming the new standard for writerly apprenticeship when she launched her career. But I don’t have the same issues as she had with the workshop paradigm as it’s now practiced, or with the proliferation of creative writing programs.


Shop Talk |

Powell's Puddly Awards

by Celeste Ng

Powell’s wants to know: what’s the best book you read in the past decade? Voting for the 2010 Puddly Awards (and the “Golden Galoshes” trophy) is now open. Nominate your favorite read of the ’00s and you could win a $250 Powell’s gift card or one of four $50 Powell’s gift cards. Current nominees range from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Voting ends January 31.


Shop Talk |

Story Prize Finalists Announced

by Celeste Ng

This year’s finalists for The Story Prize have been announced, and the competition is, as usual, staggering: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton) Drift by Victoria Patterson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) Even more remarkable, as Story Prize director Larry Dark points out, these are all books by emerging authors: What’s particularly exciting is that all three are debuts–a first for The Story Prize. In fact, in the previous five years of the award, only 2 of 15 finalists were the authors’ first books: 2004/05 finalist The Circus […]


Shop Talk |

REMINDER: Amazing *Poets & Writers* deal for FWR readers! Sign up by tomorrow to get the Jan/Feb Issue

by Anne Stameshkin

As we announced earlier this month, Poets & Writers is continuing to offer a special deal to FWR readers (a description that includes anyone lucky enough to stumble across this post): only $12 for a year-long subscription! Take advantage of this hugely discounted rate by subscribing — or renewing your current subscription — via this link. Be sure to sign up by Friday, January 15 (tomorrow) if you want your subscription to include the Jan/Feb 2010 issue, which includes the first installment of FWR Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin’s Inside Indie Bookstores series. Subscribing through this link will help show support […]


Shop Talk |

Who should ReadThis help next?

by Anne Stameshkin

In 2009, the now year-old organization ReadThis hit the ground running with a number of ambitious (and notably successful) projects–such as sending books to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and creating libraries for a Bronx public school and a Harlem children’s hospital. Who should ReadThis help supply books to in 2010? If you have suggestions, the board would love to hear from you. Via today’s Facebook message: ReadThis will be having a board meeting in a couple of weeks to plan the next six months of ReadThis activities. If you know of a school, workplace, hospital, military base, literacy organization, […]


Interviews |

Elephants and Online Fiction: An Interview with Michael Czyzniejewski

Author of the recently published short story collection Elephants in Our Bedroom, Michael Czyzniejewski grew up in the Chicago suburb of Calumet City, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1995 with a degree in rhetoric, and two years later, he received an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University.




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