Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2011

Interviews |

He Was Just There For Me: An Interview with Lily King

by Joshua Bodwell

Lily King’s three novels stand as testaments to the power and endless variation of familial relationships. King’s latest novel, Father of the Rain, tells the story of a daughter’s life-long, primal loyalty to her charming and manipulative father. Interviewer Joshua Bodwell discusses longhand, autobiographical influence, puppies, and how to depict realistic sex, with a writer whose work remains “a beacon of tenderness and sincerity.”


Shop Talk |

Let's get digital

by Lee Thomas

This post stems from a conversation with my brother – who recently moved to Chile – about what he’d loaded onto his Kindle. As a recent college grad, with limited disposable income, he was pretty stringent in choosing the books he bought. But he’s a voracious reader. His solution: he loaded up his e-reader with a clutch of classics that have entered the public domain. Let them read (old) books! Though beautiful books draw my eye, the trump card for me will always be the words on the page. I love books for the story, which means I keep reading […]


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Wigleaf

by Lee Thomas

There’s something to be said for simplicity. An afternoon spent at the park. Only what you can fit in your pocket. A bowl of fresh apricots straight from the tree (sorry, New York has me dreaming of summer already). Every time I visit Wigleaf, their clean design aesthetic, wide margins and punchy, brief stories of under 1,000 words feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day (even when I am looking at several inches of snow outside the window). Wigleaf started in 2008, and we have Scott Garson to thank for the design and main editing on […]


Shop Talk |

The Difference between the Lightning Bug and the Lightning

New South Books, an Alabama publisher, plans to release a version of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn wherein the n-word is replaced by the word “slave.” 219 times. The professor who originally approached the publisher with the idea did so because he himself felt uncomfortable using the word in class. I, of course, feel uncomfortable even writing it out. And if I were teaching Huck Finn, I wouldn’t utter it either, though its presence certainly wouldn’t keep me from teaching the book in the classroom and discussing this discomfort with my students. Needless to say, the release of this […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Gryphon, by Charles Baxter

by Anne Stameshkin

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 Damon Galgut’s novel In a Strange Room, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Alex Boyles, Kara Candito, and Joanne Wong. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Charles Baxter’s Gryphon: New and Selected Stories. Baxter is the author of more than a dozen books, including four previous collections of stories, five novels, and several books of nonfiction. His novel The Feast of Love was nominated for the […]


Shop Talk |

Bloggers: Give Quote, Get Promo

I’m writing a chapter for a course on blogging, and I’ve been asked to collect quotes about writing from bloggers. So I’m turning to you, readers of the FWR blog, to help me keep my day job by making this great! To participate, you must have a blog, preferably one on writing, but it could be on something else. And you must send me a short quote – about 3-5 sentences – about writing. You can send more than one, but we’ll only use one from each blogger. If we use your quote, we’ll give you credit and likely ask […]


Shop Talk |

The World's Most Literary Rent Party Ever

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

On Sunday, February 6th, join literary greats such as Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Rick Moody, Amy Hempel, Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Hannah Tinti at PS 122 in New York’s East Village as they throw “The World’s Most Literary Rent Party Ever,” to raise money for Diana Colbert, wife of novelist Charles Bock (author of Beautiful Children). In 2009 Colbert was diagnosed with leukemia and had a bone marrow transplant. But in October of this year, the leukemia returned. So friends of the Bocks–writers Fiona Maazel, Mary-Beth Hughes, and Leigh Newman–decided to help by throwing this literary fund-raiser. As […]


Shop Talk |

A Room of Her Own

by Lee Thomas

Attention all ladies: A Room of Her Own (AROHO) has a trio of great awards coming up in January and beyond. The foundation for women writers & artists, whose mission encompasses empowering, educating, and encouraging women writers and artists, features their spring Orlando Prize, with submissions closing on January 31. AROHO writes: AROHO’s Orlando Prizes for unpublished poetry, short fiction, flash fiction and nonfiction celebrate Virginia Woolf’s title character’s liberation from the restraints of time and gender. AROHO’s new array of competitions is an invitation of women writers to manifest their own escapades “in gardens running down to the river, […]




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