Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2013

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Hypothetical Girl, by Elizabeth Cohen

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Elizabeth Cohen’s story collection The Hypothetical Girl, which was published by Other Press. Cohen is the author of The Family on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Love and Courage (Random House, 2004), which chronicles Cohen’s life raising her young daughter and taking care of her father as he struggles with Alzheimer’s disease. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is also the author of numerous collections of poetry, including What the Trees Said (2013) and The Economist’s Daughter (2011). She is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh and she […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Isle of Youth, by Laura van den Berg

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Laura van den Berg’s new collection The Isle of Youth, which releases today from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her debut collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award. For more information on Laura and her work, please visit: http://www.lauravandenberg.com/. In the introduction to her recent interview with the […]


Interviews |

Five Questions for Patricia McNair

The stories in Patricia McNair’s The Temple of Air are unified by recurring characters and a central setting: New Hope, Michigan. City dwellers come to this small town for a slower life only to discover that the rural landscape does not necessarily create ease or simplicity. Mark Elevad poses five questions to the author about her work and this debut collection.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Raven's Gift, by Don Rearden

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Don Rearden‘s debut novel The Raven’s Gift, which was recently published by Penguin. Rearden grew up on the tundra of Southwestern Alaska, where his experiences with the Yup’ik Eskimo culture shaped both his writing and to a larger extent his worldview. He lives in the mountain community of Bear Valley, Alaska, and teaches as an Associate Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Don also serves as the president of the board of directors for the 49 Alaska Writers and is faculty for the 2012 Kachemak Bay Writing Conference. In the introduction to his recent interview […]


Shop Talk |

My Inner Erma: Embracing Humor Writing

by Heather Ryan

My close friend Anthony once told me during an e-mail conversation that he considered me the modern-day equivalent of Erma Bombeck. I was offended. I think my actual reply was “WTF?” Anthony was confused. “Erma Bombeck was a great writer,” he typed. “She melded all of this every day experience into something bigger, but she did it by being funny.” “I don’t want to be Erma Bombeck! I want to be Joan Didion!” “You’re not that kind of serious,” he wrote. “Can I be Alice Munro?” It went on like this until he said, “You know, I meant it as […]


Interviews |

Hogs Will Inherit the Earth: An Interview with Pinckney Benedict

by Polly Stewart

“I am tempted to spin you a story about a chance boyhood encounter in the deep forest with a wild hog that left me scarred and terrified and thus writing out my fear and horror for the rest of time, but I’ll restrain the impulse.” Pinckney Benedict talks with Mary Stewart Atwell in this second interview in a series on rural fiction.




Literary Partners