Hannah Tinti was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a place she credits with having influenced the darker side of her fiction. Charlotte Boulay talks with the much-admired author and editor about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.
Congratulations to this year’s winners of The Collection Giveaway Project! Earlier today we held four separate drawings to determine the recipients of our free story collections, and here are the results: Shannon for Laura van den Berg’s collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Pete for Joshua Furst’s collection Short People Barrett Shipp for Skip Horack’s collection The Southern Cross Melanie Yarbrough for Robin Black’s collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Thanks also to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer (who first suggested the giveaway), the editors of The Replacement […]
As the month winds to a close over Memorial Day weekend and summer officially begins, we’ll also be wrapping up our celebration of May as Short Story Month. Inspired by The Emerging Writers Network and their unparalleled coverage off all things story-related each May, as well as The Poetry Book Giveaway For National Poetry Month, we decided to launch The Collection Giveaway Project (warm thanks to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer for suggesting our site as a home for this promotion). The goal is a simple one: to get readers talking about their favorite stories and story collections. So […]
Grub Street is an independent not-for-profit writing center in Boston that runs writing classes as well as an annual literary conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. At the most recent Muse, Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker, and even if you missed the conference, you can watch his speech below. Palahniuk tells the story of a very bad night in Paris on book tour and offers some possible metaphors for writing, as well as advice on eating cheese in France (!): Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo. You can also listen to last year’s keynote address (in MP3 format) […]
The Drum is a new online literary magazine that bills itself as “a literary magazine for your ears.” Founded and edited by writer Henriette Lazaridis Power, The Drum features short fiction and essays, read aloud by the authors. According to the journal’s website, the goal is to provide literature in portable, sharable, audio form: Each of The Drum’s ten annual issues brings you new literature you can weave into your daily life. Listen online or download the audio to listen to on your mp3 player and/or to share with up to five friends. Use our tags to choose a story […]
The Social Security Administration recently released its annual list of most popular baby names, and surprise! The influence of one particular novel—or rather, series of novels—was quite clear. Reports the New York Times: [F]lying up the list was an ancient name with modern fame: Cullen, the surname of one handsome bloodsucker, Edward, in the frighteningly popular vampire films “Twilight,” based on the best-selling novels by Stephenie Meyer. Cullen materialized at 485, leaping almost 300 spots from 2008 for the biggest increase of any boy’s name; it wedged firmly between Braiden and Kason. Other names from the Twilight series also showed […]
Bob Dylan turned sixty-nine today. And regardless of how you feel about the man’s music, or how you feel about the different incarnations of his work—pre/post electric, pre/post born again, pre/post Victoria’s Secret—you’ve got to give him credit for knowing how to put together an album, which is a lot different than just writing a great song. My favorite is his 1976 album Desire. Maybe it’s the story writer in me, but the narrative quality of “Hurricane” and “Isis” and “Oh, Sister” just knock me out. More importantly, there’s a unity to the songs—in tone, in subject, in approach—that gives […]
In case you’ve missed them, these are the features Fiction Writers Review has been lucky to publish in the last month: In an adaptation of his AWP panel talk, Jeremiah Chamberlin discusses “talking shop” in the age of new media: [O]nline journals like Fiction Writers Review provide a unique place for emerging writers to join the conversation. After all, few print journals accept book reviews from individuals who haven’t yet published a book themselves. And even if they do, they rarely take unsolicited work. So how does an emerging writer enter this critical dialogue? Here they can. Special guest Peter […]
We all had one. It’s one of those universals of human experience, more constant than love or rage or betrayal or grace. I’m talking about a childhood. Still, it’s impressively difficult to capture on the page, pitch the right tone, allow the perfect amount of insight and innocence, or describe the overblown drama of what it feels like to be a kid. From the opening story of his collection, Short People, Joshua Furst nails it. That first story, “The Age of Exploration,” follows the ramblings of Jason and Billy, best friends, both age six. Most of us can remember things […]
I frequently happen upon Selected Shorts on NPR midway through a story and go through a predictable course of thinking: I’ve missed the first part of the story. I should just download the podcast and hear it from the top. Wow, that sentence was brilliant. What the heck is going on here? And then I end up listening to the conclusion of the story and enjoying it immensely. Now that I’m in New York, I hope to make it to one of the live stage performances of Selected Shorts. If you’re lucky enough to already have a ticket, on May […]
