Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2012

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Stories We Love: Two Stories and A Life

by Joshua Bodwell

On June 9, 1992 I turned seventeen years old and my father gave me a single gift: a book that contained a short story that changed my life. The book was Septuagenarian Stew by Charles Bukowski and the short story was the first in the collection: “Son of Satan.” It’s a simple story, really, just six and a half pages long, propelled by curse-riddled dialogue and clipped, action-filled sentences. Classic Bukowski. But unlike many of Buk’s bum and whore populated tales, “Son of Satan” is told by an eleven-year-old narrator. After the narrator and his two friends accuse another boy […]


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Get Writing: Word Salad

Some of the students loved words like “denial” and “dysfunction.” Characters in fiction “had issues.” It was the early 90s and people talked like this. I’d just gotten a flyer in my mailbox announcing the World’s Best Short Short Story contest sponsored by Florida State University and the late Jerome Stern. I made copies of the 1991 winner, “Baby, Baby, Baby,” by Francois Camoin. We read it out loud. Everyone admired the story’s energy and wild inventiveness. “Baby,” I wrote on the blackboard. I asked everyone to name a food. “Rutabagas,” said the country singer. “Pigs’ knuckles,” said the clown who liked to shock […]


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Book of the Week: Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events, by Kevin Moffett

This week’s feature is Kevin Moffett‘s new story collection, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events (Harper Perennial). He is also the author of Permanent Visitors, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, judged by George Saunders, and was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Believer Book Award. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in such places as Tin House, the Harvard Review, American Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune, the Believer, A Public Space, and in three editions of The Best American Short Stories. The title story for this new collection won the National Magazine Award […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain

Last week we featured Lucia Perillo’s collection Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Dana (@danadilly) Rachel Farrell (@rachelfarrell) Connor Ferguson (@csferguson) Congrats! 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! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!


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Stories We Love: "A&P"

by Sarah Van Arsdale

It just kept nosing its way into my own novel—“A&P” by John Updike. I’d first read it when teaching lit classes years before, and now, as I finished my third novel, my characters kept making references to it: a girl’s mind “just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar” or the way the boy at the register sees the girls’ bathing suits. Knowing it’s best to let the subconscious have its way while writing fiction, I let the story in, even as I wondered what it was doing there. My novel, Grand Isle, was in print a […]


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Shout-out: Daniel Wallace on Air Schooner

by Celeste Ng

We were delighted to learn that FWR contributor extraordinaire Daniel Wallace made an appearance on Prairie Schooner‘s podcast, Air Schooner, this past week. Along with travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Daniel reads from his work on his traveling to Syria and living in the Old Quarter of Damascus under the Assad regime. You can listen to Air Schooner #9 on the Prairie Schooner website. Congratulations, Daniel! Further Reading: Like what you heard?  Read more of Daniel Wallace’s work on FWR, and visit Daniel’s blog to learn more about him.


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Thoughts on shorts: Danielle Evans

by Celeste Ng

“[T]he value of a short story is the same as the value of all literature—that it allows a person to confront the world in a new way, that at its best it has the power to act as a transformative experience, and to leave the reader changed—smarter and more empathetic. I think there’s something especially lovely about being able to have a complete, meaningful emotional experience in the time it takes to read ten to twenty pages.” ~ Danielle Evans Further Reading: Read more about Danielle Evans on Fiction Writers Review Looking for something to read? Check out the Stories […]




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