Suspend Your Disbelief

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More on the DIY Book Tour

by Celeste Ng

Jeremy recently posted about Allison Amend’s tips for a do-it-yourself book tour. Author-arranged promotions are becoming more and more common as publishers cut back on marketing and publicity, and the L.A. Times has some firsthand accounts of what such a book tour can be like: A cat peeing in an author’s bag? A writer waking up to discover that a complete stranger has left him four jars of delicious homemade preserves? Such things are not traditionally part of book promotion. But they happened to Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, an Austin, Texas-based couple who celebrated the simultaneous release of […]


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Reviewlet: An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell

An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell Unbridled Books, April 2010 256 pp Concert violist Suzanne Sullivan is preparing dinner when she hears on the radio that her long-term lover Alex—a well-known conductor—has perished in a plane crash. Living with her husband (a composer), her best friend Pertra (a concert violinist) and Petra’s deaf daughter Adele, Suzanne is forced to grieve in secret. With one foot in a dysfunctional marriage and one hand in the rearing of a child not her own, she comes to realize that it was during her stolen moments with Alex that she felt most whole. But […]


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FWR @ AWP 2010

AWP 2010 in Denver is just days away, and Fiction Writers Review will be there. Stop by our table at the bookfair, sign up for our mailing list, win loot from the FWR store, and check out our panel with the editors of Waccamaw, The Emerging Writers Network/Dzanc, and storySouth on Saturday from noon to 1:15 (Granite Room: Hyatt Regency, 3rd Floor): S163. Evolution of the New Media: Online Literary Journals and Websites in 2010. (Dan Albergotti, Dan Wickett, Jeremiah Chamberlin, Terry Kennedy) This panel examines the evolution of online publishing and literary promotion via digital media in the 21st […]


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Literature of the Workplace

by Celeste Ng

In The New York Times, Book Review editor Jennifer Schuessler discusses the evolution of office-lit and why working the double shift might actually be shaping contemporary novels: Enough with the cozy stay-at-home dramas and urban picaresques featuring young slackers with no identifiable paycheck! The literary novel needs more tinkers and tailors, the argument goes. (The best-seller list seems to take care of the soldiers and spies.) In a video introduction to the latest issue of Granta, dedicated to the theme of “Work,” John Freeman, the magazine’s editor, lamented the literary “invisibility” of daily toil. The essayist Alain de Botton, writing […]


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Stealing Pleasure: Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief Series

by Charlotte Boulay

I’ve come a bit late (only 14 years or so) to the wonder that is Megan Whalen Turner, author of the young adult fantasy series The Queen’s Thief. Of all the books I’ve read in recent memory, not many compare to this series, which is serial narrative of the best kind—the kind that gets richer and more complex as it develops. Before this month, there were three novels: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia. A fourth, A Conspiracy of Kings, has just been released. I can’t wait to read it.


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FWR's Latest Features

It’s been a busy few weeks at Fiction Writers Review: here’s a roundup of some of our recent features: John Madera reviews Leni Zumas’s collection Farewell Navigator: “There is a seductive element to how these narratives unfold: a slow accretion of details, together with the use of fragmentation, absence, and space, achieves a confluence of associations, connections, and even some kind of understanding.” Mary Stewart Atwell reviews Pieces for the Left Hand, by J. Robert Lennon, describing this collection of linked short-short stories as “shar[ing] with the work of [Stuart Dybek and Lydia Davis] an interest in the precise image […]


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Jim Crace's Last Book

by Celeste Ng

We love our debut novels here at Fiction Writers Review. As a site devoted to emerging writers, we love calling attention to the start of a literary career and the promise of a new voice. But here is some news of a very different sort: recently, veteran author Jim Crace made news by announcing that his next novel will be his last. The Independent reports: “Writing careers are short,” [Crace] expands. “For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely […]


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Reading Rainbow Resurrected?

by Celeste Ng

Six months ago, we here at FWR (and many others) mourned the end of long-running PBS show Reading Rainbow. Now, rumor has it that Reading Rainbow may make a comeback. Host LeVar Burton recently tweeted: You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in the works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you don’t have to… If you can complete that sentence, you’re probably one of the millions who can’t wait to see this show—which encouraged kids to love books and reading—back on the air. No further details have been released yet, but we can hope, right? Via.


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2010 Asian American Short Story Contest–DEADLINE EXTENDED

by Celeste Ng

Hyphen Editor Neelanjana Banerjee reports that due to excellent response to the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest, the contest deadline has been extended to April 12, 2010. As a reminder, the contest is open to all writers of Asian descent living in the United States and Canada, and there is no required theme. This year’s judges are Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin. Ten finalists will receive a one-year subscription to Hyphen and a one-year membership to Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and one grand prize winner will also receive $1,000 and publication in Hyphen. Read our earlier post about the […]


Reviews |

Long for This World, by Sonya Chung

by Celeste Ng

The cover of Sonya Chung’s debut novel, Long for This World (Scribner, March 2010), shows a young woman gazing out over a wide ocean, raising a camera to her eye. Chung’s main character is a photographer, but that’s not the only reason this cover is so apt. The novel unfolds like a collection of intimate snapshots, telling a story of loss and unexpected renewal.




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