Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2013

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Stories We Love: "Dick," by Antonya Nelson

by Rebecca Scherm

“Dick” is a snorter, a mean cackler, a muffled hooter. It’s a story to read on the subway home from a maddening staff meeting, or on your front steps after a surreal and unpleasant interaction with a neighbor, or to prepare for a holiday with extended family. Ann Ponders (har har) moves her husband and son from L.A. to Colorado, hoping to leave everything unnerving behind: her snorting, smoking daughter Lizzie, “clever and duplicitous” in “the whole smooth suit of skin she wore without thinking”; her Alzheimer’s-addled mother, now in a nursing home; her young son’s best friend, Dick, who […]


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#StorySunday: Celebrating Stories on a Weekly Basis

by Erika Dreifus

During a past Short Story Month, I suggested five ways we might celebrate short stories. Topping the list was this recommendation: 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. Three years after the London-born Hershman launched it, #StorySunday is still going strong. To celebrate Short Story Month 2013, I decided to check in with her to learn more about the hashtag. She graciously took time from her busy schedule (which […]


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Book of the Week: I Want to Show You More, by Jamie Quatro

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Jamie Quatro’s debut collection, I Want to Show You More, which was just published by Grove Press. Quatro’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the winner of the 2011 American Short Fiction Story Contest, she is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and was the Georges and Anne Borchardt Scholar at the 2011 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She holds graduate degrees from the College […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: The Cineaste

by The Editors

Last week’s feature was Van Jordan’s new book of poetry, The Cineaste, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Glenn H. Myers (@glennhmyers) Doug Lawson (@douglawson) Stacy Faulk (@kiokokitten) 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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Post-love Stories We Love: "Day Million," by Frederik Pohl

by Brandon Bye

Once upon a time in Seattle I lived with a lawyer, a librarian, an engineer, and a retailer. We threw dance-y parties and hosted champagne and apricot scone brunches. We read by the fireplace and played after dinner games of Settlers of Catan. And although we did not know one another prior to moving in together—we met the old-fashion way, on craigslist—we became close. It started with the lawyer, and after a time the whole house was online dating. They, like many twenty-odds, were using OkCupid—“the Google of online dating.” Soon, our wholesome after dinner board games changed to after […]


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Happy Short Story Month!

by The Editors

Happy Short Story Month 2013! Once again, we’ll be celebrating short stories all month here at Fiction Writers Review: Reviews of fantastic story collections, such as Jamie Quatro’s debut I Want to Show You More, which is our lead feature for the month. We’re also excited to publish reviews of Ethan Rutherford‘s The Peripatetic Coffin, Karen Russell‘s Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and several others that we’ve been saving for Short Story Month. Interviews with established writers like Charles Yu, debut authors like Sarah Gerkensmeyer, whose collection What You Are Now Enjoying is currently longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International […]


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Book of the Week: The Cineaste, by A. Van Jordan

by The Editors

This week’s feature is A. Van Jordan’s new book of poetry, The Cineaste, which was just published by W.W. Norton. The book merges the form and content of an obsession, film, to produce poems tracking the inner lives of movie viewers, the career of early black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, the story of the Leo Frank trial, and the disturbing racial history of the American film industry. Jordan’s first book of poetry, Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001), tracks not only the history of African American music, but also the music of Jordan’s life growing up in Ohio. His second book, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A […]




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