Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2013

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., by Nichole Bernier

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Nichole Bernier‘s debut novel, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., which was a finalist for the New England Booksellers fiction award and a Target Emerging Author selection. She served as a Contributing Editor for Conde Nast Traveler for fourteen years, and was previously on staff as an editor, columnist, and television spokesperson. She received her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she received the school’s award for literary journalism, and has written for publications including Psychology Today, Elle, Self, Health, Men’s Journal, Salon, The Millions, and Post Road Literary Magazine. After […]


Interviews |

Finding the Authenticating Narrator: Part II of a Conversation with Russell Banks

by Sebastian Matthews

Back in the fall of 2012, Sebastian Matthews hosted Russell Banks as Visiting Writer for Warren Wilson College’s Harwood-Cole Lecture Series. Knowing he’d be in town for a few days, Matthews arranged to interview Banks, who is a long-time family friend, on Jeff Davis’ radio show Word Play. What follows is Part II of their conversation.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The City of Devi, by Manil Suri

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Manil Suri’s new novel, The City of Devi, which is just out in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. Manil Suri was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) and is a professor of mathematics and affiliate professor of Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is also the author of the novels The Death of Vishnu (2001) and The Age of Shiva (2008), both of which were published by W.W. Norton & Company, as well. His fiction has won several awards and honors and has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He was named by […]


Interviews |

Finding the Authenticating Narrator: Part I of a Conversation with Russell Banks

by Sebastian Matthews

Back in the fall of 2012, Sebastian Matthews hosted Russell Banks as Visiting Writer for Warren Wilson College’s Harwood-Cole Lecture Series. Knowing he’d be in town for a few days, Matthews arranged to interview Banks, who is a long-time family friend, on Jeff Davis’ radio show Word Play. What follows is Part I of their conversation.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Pure Gold Baby

by The Editors

This week’s feature is Margaret Drabble’s novel The Pure Gold Baby, which is just out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This is Dame Drabble’s seventeenth book, and her first novel in nearly a decade, since The Red Queen (Harcourt, 2004). In the interval she has published a collection of stories, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), and a memoir, The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). In the introduction to her recent review of The Pure Gold Baby, Ellen Prentiss Campbell writes: It is good news that […]


Shop Talk |

Shout-out: FWR’s Celeste Ng on Five Chapters

by The Editors

Yes, we here are FWR are hardworking editors bringing you the best reviews, interviews, and essays we can find—but we’re also writers ourselves.  So we’re happy to share that Celeste Ng, our own editor-at-large (and longtime blog editor)  has a story up on Five Chapters. If you’re not familiar with Five Chapters, they’re a great online journal publishing one story each week, in five parts—a little throwback to the old days of serial literature. Celeste’s story, “The Kind of Man,” features a troubled marriage, a meddling father-in-law, a nine-year-old with an unfortunate crush, and… Dick Cheney?  Don’t worry: the entire […]


Shop Talk |

Shout-out: FWR’s Celeste Ng on Five Chapters

by The Editors

Yes, we here are FWR are hardworking editors bringing you the best reviews, interviews, and essays we can find—but we’re also writers ourselves.  So we’re happy to share that Celeste Ng, our own editor-at-large (and longtime blog editor)  has a story up on Five Chapters. If you’re not familiar with Five Chapters, they’re a great online journal publishing one story each week, in five parts—a little throwback to the old days of serial literature. Celeste’s story, “The Kind of Man,” features a troubled marriage, a meddling father-in-law, a nine-year-old with an unfortunate crush, and… Dick Cheney?  Don’t worry: the entire […]




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