Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

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Bloggers Host Authors at Greenlight Bookstore

by Anne Stameshkin

Next Monday, March 22, at 7:30 PM, Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore continues their Blogger/Author Pairings series, wherein lit bloggers host and talk with authors whose books they love, and the authors read from their work. Next up is Brooklyn’s own blogger/critic Maud Newton (of MaudNewton.com, one of the finest lit blogs, exclamation point) and award-winning author Victor LaValle, whose work has drawn comparisons to the likes of Ralph Ellison, Shirley Jackson, and Thomas Pyncheon, and whose novel (of the same title) inspired Mos Def’s The Ecstatic. LaValle will read from and discuss his new novel Big Machine, which Greenlight’s newsletter describes […]


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Microchondria Short Short Story Anthology

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last month we announced the Harvard Book Store’s short short story contest. In honor of the shortest month of the year, the store was seeking submissions that were both short in length (less than 500 words) and written during a brief period of time (between February 1-17). The results have now been posted, and we are pleased to announce that a story by contributor Liana Imam will be collected in an anthology of the winners, entitled Microchondria. In addition to Liana’s work, friend of FWR Cody Walker–whose cartoon caption won a recent New Yorker caption contest that we blogged about […]


Reviews |

Pieces for the Left Hand, by J. Robert Lennon

by Polly Stewart

J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand is a collection of 100 linked short short stories–linked by their location, a small upstate New York town that resembles Lennon’s hometown of Ithaca, and by their narrator, described as “unemployed, and satisfied to be unemployed.”


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The Best Sentences, One Tweet at a Time

by Celeste Ng

New York Magazine book critic Sam Anderson is running a literary Twitter experiment — and no, this isn’t a Twitter novel. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite. Anderson tweets the best sentence he reads each day, and as he points out, “‘Best,’ in this context, can mean almost anything: funny, beautiful, enlightening, stylistically amazing.” A few of his selections: “Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.” (philip larkin, ‘absences’) I think that at least a third to half of all MFA seats should be reserved for people with families. (junot diaz, panorama interv. w eggers) “But according […]


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Steve Almond on Self-publishing

by Celeste Ng

On The Rumpus, author Steve Almond explains why he recently decided to self-publish a book of short stories and essays, This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey–and it’s probably not for the reasons you’d think: If this were a traditional publishing endeavor, the next question would be how to get the book a “bigger platform,” meaning a place in the great Barnes-&-Noble-Amazon-Kindle-i-Pad-clusterfuckosphere. But because this is something much more personal, I decided – nah. I was cool with Harvard Bookstore selling it. But other than that, Minute, Honey is available only at readings. My reasoning is pretty simple: I want […]


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Recommended Reading: Aryn Kyle story in Five Chapters

by Celeste Ng

I am not a patient person. People who do slow, meticulous things like needlepoint and whittling amaze and bewilder me. This impatience applies to my reading habits, too: when immersed in a book I love, I can’t stop myself from reading faster and faster, eager to see the whole picture, to wolf the whole story into my head. Luckily, though, Five Chapters exists to remind me that patience is a virtue. Five Chapters publishes one story each week, with one section of the story posted each day. It’s an old-fashioned exercise in delayed gratification, and as this week’s story is […]


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2010 Asian American Short Story Contest

by Celeste Ng

Entries are now being accepted for the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest–the only national, pan-Asian American writing competition of its kind. The contest’s sponsors are two of the leading promoters of Asian American literary arts: Hyphen magazine is a non-profit news and culture magazine and blog that focuses on exploring Asian American identity, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is the most prominent organization in the country dedicated to exceptional literature by writers of Asian descent. Fiction Writers Review is proud to be a media partner for the 2010 contest. This year’s judges are Alexander Chee and Jaed […]


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Boston Public Library's Children's Writer in Residence Fellowship

by Celeste Ng

The Boston Public Library is now accepting applications for its Children’s Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, a little-known but wonderful opportunity for children’s and YA writers. The fellowship, offered to one writer per year, is intended to “provide an emerging children’s writer with the financial and administrative support needed to complete one literary work” and offers a workspace in the library and a $20,000 stipend. Recipients’ projects may be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, illustration combined with any of the former, or a script; last year’s recipient, Kelly Hourihan, is working on a YA novel. There is no application fee, and to apply, you must […]


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Shady Side Review Postcard Contest

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

The Shady Side Review is having a postcard contest. They’re seeking the best poetry or prose of 100 words or less. Winners will have their work published on–what else?–postcards. The submission deadline is March 17, and each entry is $1. From the Editors: What can you get for a dollar these days? A newspaper (but they don’t usually publish fiction unless you’re famous. Are you famous? Maybe your work is already in a newspaper then.) A bagel (but unless you carve your poem into the dough, your work does not appear here). Eternal fame and glory (this can be achieved […]


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Love Letter to the Deckle Edge

by Celeste Ng

If all the recent talk about the iPad and the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing catfight has you longing for a simpler time, look no further than this ode to the deckle edge on The Millions: Opening a book can already feel like opening a gift. Armed with a knife and freeing the pages and the story hidden beneath the folds, it becomes something more, “a penetration of its secrets” and an act of discovery, shot through with a suggestion of violence and danger or of the painful gestation of the words themselves. This act of cutting open pages to read a […]




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