Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2011

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Five Ways to Celebrate Short Stories

by Erika Dreifus

Here at FWR, we’re certainly doing our collective best to honor the art and craft of the short story this month. But there are lots of ways that each fiction writer can celebrate short stories individually. Here are five possibilities: Participate in #StorySunday: Reminded each Sunday by @TaniaHershman, short-story fans are encouraged to share a link via Twitter to someone else’s short story using the hashtag #StorySunday. Quick. Painless. Free. Click here to see the latest #StorySunday tweets. Listen to Selected Shorts: As its brand-new website explains, Selected Shorts “is a weekly public radio show broadcast on over 130 stations […]


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The Origins of Short Story Month: a guest post by Dan Wickett

by The Editors

Editor’s note: As part of our celebration of Short Story Month, we’re delighted to re-publish a 2011 guest post by Dan Wickett, founder and editor of the Emerging Writers Network, co-founder of Dzanc Books, and creator of Short Story Month. In early April of 2007, I was celebrating National Poetry Month at the Emerging Writers Network blog by taking a look at the poems of the day being posted by the Writers In The Schools (WITS) program of Houston, which had been written by 4th graders. It was a fun project, but readers of the EWN know that fiction is […]


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Journal of the Week subscription winners: BOMB

by Celeste Ng

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our BOMB Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Sonia Rumzi (@SRumzi) Fic Addict (@fic_addict) Alice Tasman (@AliceTasman) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to BOMB! Please contact us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of BOMB and the exclusive interview with General Manager, Digital Strategy Paul Morris, you can read the whole thing in our blog archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal giveaways, please visit our […]


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Book of the Week: Binocular Vision, by Edith Pearlman

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Edith Pearlman’s story collection Binocular Vision. The consummate short story writer, Edith Pearlman has published more than 250 works of short fiction and non-fiction over the past four decades. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, the Antioch Review, Ascent, the New England Review, and The Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses. Pearlman has written travel essays about Budapest, Tokyo and the Costwalds for the New York Times, and reflections on the allure of the roulette table, and her husband’s “mistress” – […]


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"The loose change in the treasury of fiction"

by Celeste Ng

Why do we need a Short Story Month? The things we designate particular months or days to celebrate are the things we tend to overlook: mothers, ve terans, black history, flags. And indeed, the short story is often overlooked or dismissed in favor of its bigger, flashier, more prominent cousin, the novel. Think about it: how many short story collections can you name? Unless you’re a fiction writer—and maybe even if you are—the answer is probably in the single digits. How many novels can you name? You see my point. So why is the short story given such short shrift? […]


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The Collection Giveaway Project 2011

by Lee Thomas

Short Story Month is off with a bang! Inspired by the Emerging Writers Network who inaugurated May as Short Story Month in 2007—and the Big Poetry Giveaway for National Poetry Month, Fiction Writers Review is excited to welcome you to our second year of The Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to raise attention for short story collections. Thanks to all who have already emailed FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, who is spearheading the CGP this year. For participating blogs, and details on how YOU can participate in The Collection Giveaway Project, please visit the CGP Home. […]


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Stories We Love: "Dog Song"

by Lee Thomas

I’ve been wary of dog yarns ever since my mother sobbed through the final chapters of Where the Red Fern Grows, and I didn’t discover until years later the real fate of Old Dan. It was affecting – perhaps too much so – but I also felt cheated somehow, that an emotion so universally felt was a writer’s cheap shot. Some stories come like a revelation. Ann Pancake’s “Dog Song”—twenty-one pages of alchemical genius, pure voice, and indescribable originality—changed my mind about the dogs, and made me an evangelist. Evan Rehill has been championing this story, and gave it to […]


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Get Writing: Cross-Out

by Celeste Ng

Sometimes, when you’re faced with a blank page, the thought of filling that page with even one word of your own is Just. Too. Daunting. Here’s an exercise for those days. You won’t need to write a single word—you’ll be taking words away. Find a paragraph of someone else’s writing. It can be a passage from a story or essay, a section of a news article, whatever. Cross off or delete words and create a mini-story (or story fragment) of 60 words or less from the remaining words. For an extra challenge, keep the original paragraph’s word order. Here is […]


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You're invited: FWR's Stort Story Month Celebration!

by Celeste Ng

The editors and contributors of Fiction Writers Review cordially invite you to celebrate Short Story Month with them. Details below! Who: Short story lovers everywhere When: The entire month of May—coverage starts Sunday, May 1. As part of the celebration, we’ll have special weekend posts, too! Where: All across the site, from reviews to interviews to the blog What: Here’s just a preview of the content we’ll be featuring: Reviews of fantastic story collections Interviews with master short story writers like Mary Gaitskill and Robert Boswell “Stories We Love” blog posts – writers on the stories that inspire them—and why […]




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