Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

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The Paris Review and Barnes & Noble Series in NYC

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

New York readers, ring in the New Year with a month of Monday readings to celebrate The Paris Review’s iconic interview series. Starting this Monday, January 4th, the Barnes and Noble flagship store at 86th and Lexington, in New York City, will host a month-long series of interviews showcasing authors, artists, and editors discussing writers, writing, and the writing life. The first event will feature Benjamin Percy–one of our favorite authors here at FWR–who will be interviewing Carol Sklenicka about her recent biography of Raymond Carver. Here is the schedule of the events: Monday, January 4th at 7:00pm: Benjamin Percy, […]


Reviews |

The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey

by Mary Westbrook

At the start of Samantha Harvey’s debut novel, The Wilderness, which won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize, Jake Jameson, the story’s aging protagonist, is high above the English moors, staring down from a biplane on a landscape he used to know. But when the sight of the pilot’s “thick neck” triggers a disturbing memory…Jake isn’t upset. He’s excited.The reason: Jake has Alzheimer’s. And so begins Harvey’s novel, which centers on Jake’s attempt to look back on his ordinary life through a near impenetrable fog.


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Lydia Davis, animated

Electric Literature presents this video adaptation of “The Cows”–a one-sentence story by Lydia Davis–created by artist Donna K. Bonus: did I mention it’s claymation? Lydia Davis's "The Cows" Single Sentence Animation Via.


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Writing Advice from Terminator: Salvation

Proof that good advice can come from anywhere: writing advice from Terminator: Salvation courtesy of The Rejectionist: 1. You need a plot. You really, really do. A Good Idea (“What if it’s the future! And robots are the boss of everything and this hot non-emotive dude has to find this kid who is actually his dad and send him back in time before the robots kill everyone!”) is an excellent start, but a Good Idea is NOT sufficient to carry the entire vehicle of your novel. We don’t care how highfalutin’ your concept or your prose is; you leave out […]


Interviews |

The Rebel from Helena: An Interview with Maile Meloy

by Joshua Bodwell

Through prose that is concise, confident, and empathetic, Malie Meloy evokes what David Foster Wallace called the “plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions” of life, and treats them with “reverence and conviction.” Joshua Bodwell talked with Meloy about her newest collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, the craft of writing short fiction, and the art of finding the right voice for a story.


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By Its Cover: A Book Cover Contest

Did our last post on book covers convince you that cover design makes a difference? Want to try your hand at it? Design blog Venus febriculosa is running a book cover design contest for Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The deadline is February 26, 2010, and the winner gets $1000. More information on the contest is here. And for further inspiration, check out the stunning entries and winners for the last book cover contest: Nabokov’s Lolita. My favorite is the one with the scrunchie–how about you?


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Poets & Writers Subscription Deal

by Anne Stameshkin

As you know, we’re big fans of Poets & Writers Magazine around here. So we’re excited to announce that this magazine has generously agreed to offer our readers a special subscription rate of only $12. The reason for this offer is to help build support for a new series in P&W called “Inside Indie Bookstores,” written by our Associate Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin. Each issue will feature an important independent bookstore around the country. The first to be profiled will be Square Books, of Oxford, Mississippi. We hope that you will take advantage of this great deal. You’ll not only be […]


Reviews |

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy

In Malie Meloy’s most recent collection, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, there are no clear lines, no obvious right answers. Meloy’s characters are caught between two choices that are both right—or both wrong—and that’s what makes their decisions so difficult, and makes these stories so compelling. In reading them, you feel, as the author puts it, “both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything [you] wanted, all at once.”


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Coolest Bookcases

Spotted on the Huffington Post: a gallery of 11 awesome bookcases. Most are designer prototypes, but a few (like the “Sticklebook” invisible bookshelf) are for sale, and you can make the upside-down one yourself. (drool…)


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(Even) more on book trailers…

We’ve talked about book trailers on FWR before (see below)–and it seems they’re gaining an even larger (and more interesting) presence…one aspiring to an adaptation genre of its own. GalleyCat reports that the trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will be shown in movie theatres around the country. That’s the book trailer, people. On the big screen. Meanwhile, the 1993 novel Going West by Maurice Gee inspired the New Zealand Book Council to create this absolutely jaw-dropping short film. Part book trailer, part adaptation, it’s a bona fide work of art in its own right. The council’s website […]




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