Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2012

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Stories We Love: "A Change of Fashion"

Yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a garment that straddled the line between shorts and panties. Her outfit was revealing, and it made me ask questions like, “how far will fashion go?” and “what was she thinking?” Perhaps author Steven Millhauser had a similar experience at some point, and that led him to write “A Change of Fashion,” a short story that originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine, May 2006. What would happen if next season’s fashions did not favor a slightly shorter hemline or a higher heel, but hiddenness? What if dresses took on shapes larger than Victorian hoop skirts […]


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Get Writing: On Desire

Desire is the writer’s best friend. When you know what your main character wants, you have your entire story. When someone wants something–badly–he or she will get up off the couch and try to attain it. The object of desire might be a new winter coat (“The Overcoat” by Gogol), a boy (“City of Boys” by Beth Nugent), money for a family member’s medicine (“King of the Bingo Game” by Ralph Ellison), a business contract (“Like a Bad Dream” by Heinrich Boll)–it doesn’t matter, as long as the desire is concrete and the character can pursue it. The character’s desire […]


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Book of the Week: This Will Be Difficult to Explain, by Johanna Skibsrud

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Johanna Skibsrud‘s debut story collection, This Will Be Difficult to Explain (W.W. Norton). She is also the author of a novel, The Sentimentalists (2011), and two collections of poetry: I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being (2010) and Late Nights With Wild Cowboys (2008). She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is at work on another novel. In his recent reviewlet of this collection, Ben Pfeiffer writes: This Will Be Difficult to Explain is a slim, lime-colored book with a picture of a lackadaisical girl on the cover. It holds nine […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: Monstress

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Lysley Tenorio’s debut collection Monstress, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Joshua Duke (@joshmduke) Meaghan Mulholland (@Meagho) Kathryn McGowan (@comestibles) 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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Ode to the Bromance

by Shawn Andrew Mitchell

Friends say they saw our bromance bloom. I took them aside and said, admiringly, “that Nick Ostdick is alright.” Nick took them aside and said, wistfully, “Shawn seems like a cool dude.” There was a beer here, a beer there, always with chaperones. Then mano-a-mano happy hours that spilled into dinners that spilled into the manliest of frozen desserts that spilled into more happy hours. His fiancé called me his man-wife and warned me not to take him away. I was a groomsman in his wedding; he listened to my unnecessary dating life bemoanings. When I left for a semester […]


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Stories We Love: "Nephilim"

by Lee Thomas

Most stories we read, hear, even tell — we forget. A scant few haunt us across years. The best ones never leave. I still remember the first time I read One Story issue #141 on the F train. Early November in New York, when wet, bare branches foreshadow winter. It begins: Freda weighed eighteen pounds when she was born. Her feet were each six inches long. At ten, she was taller than her father. Five feet eleven and one-half inches standing in her socks. I can’t keep you in shoes, her mother would say, and they went to Woolworth’s for […]


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Thoughts on Shorts: Valerie Laken

by Celeste Ng

“With short stories, you never really expect the World at Large to care one way or the other. It’s a labor of love, and no one disputes that, and I think the purity of that endeavor is very liberating.” ~ Valerie Laken Further Reading: Read more about Valerie Laken on Fiction Writers Review Looking for something to read? Check out the Stories We Love Need inspiration? Try our Get Writing exercises




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