Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for February, 2012

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Adios, Happy Homeland!

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Ana Menendez’s new story collection, Adios, Happy Homeland!, which was published by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic. Her first collection of stories, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, was a 2001 New York Times Notable book of the year and the title story won a Pushcart Prize. In addition to her other books—Loving Che (2004) and The Last War (2009)—she’s worked as a journalist and prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. Now Menendez is establishing a creative writing program at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She lives in Amsterdam and Miami. In […]


Shop Talk |

Book-of-the-Week Winners: The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Margot Livesey’s new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Mira Bartok (@miraslist) Ben Pfeiffer (@bppfeiffer) Nadine Feldman (@Nadine_Feldman) To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!


Shop Talk |

"The writer is not the writing"

by Celeste Ng

Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course: For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. […] Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a […]


Interviews |

Fuck Sentimentality: An Interview with Robert Olen Butler

by Emily Alford

“To love and to express it is to be vulnerable. To create works of art is to be vulnerable, and it’s hard for people to let themselves be vulnerable. Especially in this world, where the internet lets us democratically savage one another, it’s even scarier, but the courage to be an artist means also the courage to love and to express it.” So says Robert Olen Butler in this candid interview with Emily Alford.


Shop Talk |

Moby-Dick… typed on toilet paper. (Yes, you read that right.)

by Celeste Ng

Do you love paper books? How about toilet paper books? Enterprising eBay seller the_heppcat offers a copy of Moby-Dick typed on 6 rolls of (clean!) Cottonelle. Says the item description: There are four full rolls, one roll (epilogue) is about 1/5 of a roll and one half-roll All of the rolls of TP came out of a brand new — clean — package of 2-ply Cottonelle. They’ve been handled very gingerly and infrequently. As you’ll see in the following photos, one or two rolls have a tear at the beginning. This is where i was trying to pull the paper […]


Shop Talk |

826 Michigan's "How to Write Like I Do Series"—This Weekend!

by Celeste Ng

Not a kid, but wish you could go to 826’s amazing writing programs? Now, thanks to 826 Michigan‘s How To Write Like I Do workshops, you can—and you don’t have to put your hair in pigtails and pretend to know about Bakugan. Inspired by a similar series at 826 Seattle, the How To Write Like I Do workshops for adults are held 5-6 times per year, led by writers like Daniel Alarcon and Peter Ho Davies. Novelist and UM MFA faculty member V.V. Ganeshananthan leads the next session February 4, 2012 (that’s tomorrow!) titled “The Reported Imagination: Journalism Techniques for […]


Shop Talk |

"Masturbate frequently."

by Celeste Ng

We hear a lot about how writers find their inspiration. But how about other creative artists? The Guardian surveyed contemporary musicians, dancers, directors, and architects to find out where they got their creative inspiration. Much of their advice is unexpected, yet would be useful to writers as well. Here’s a sampler: Guy Garvey, musician: Spending time in your own head is important. When I was a boy, I had to go to church every Sunday; the priest had an incomprehensible Irish accent, so I’d tune out for the whole hour, just spending time in my own thoughts. I still do […]


Reviews |

[Reviewlet] badbadbad, by Jesús Ángel García

by Tyler McMahon

Jesús Ángel García’s debut “transmedia” novel, badbadbad is fast, fun, irreverent, and unlike anything else in the fiction aisle. Starring a lead character who shares the author’s name, the book follows his descent from devout webmaster to the obsessed savior of a pornographic social network. Also included: a documentary, a soundtrack, a chapter-by-chapter YouTube playlist.


Shop Talk |

The problem with stories

by Celeste Ng

We love TED here at FWR–which, in case you haven’t encountered it before, you’re welcome, and I hope you didn’t have any work to do this month. This is an old TED talk, but one I hadn’t heard before and one I’ve been thinking about–particularly because it challenges the concept of storytelling. In his TED talk, writer/economist Tyler Cowen talks about why stories make him nervous and why we should be suspicious of stories. Here’s a snippet of the transcript: I was told to come here and tell you all stories, but what I’d like to do is instead tell […]


Shop Talk |

How The Muppets Changed the Course of Self-Publishing

by Celeste Ng

Remember Amanda Hocking, the writer who’s now the poster child for self-publishing success? Well, she might never have been spurred to publish her work at all if it not for… The Muppets. The Guardian has the scoop: To understand the vital Muppet connection we have to go back to April 2010. We find Hocking sitting in her tiny, sparsely furnished apartment in Austin, Minnesota. She is penniless and frustrated, having spent years fruitlessly trying to interest traditional publishers in her work. To make matters worse, she has just heard that an exhibition about Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, […]




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