Suspend Your Disbelief

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why the genius grants are, well, ingenious

by Celeste Ng

Yesterday the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 20 recipients for the 2009 Fellowships–popularly known as the “Genius” Grants. Each of the fellows learned in a single phone call that they will receive $500,000 with no strings attached. This year’s crop includes two fiction writers, novelist Edwidge Danticat and short story writer Deborah Eisenberg. Two things about this: First, the program’s stated mission is “to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.” So as a fiction writer, I find it empowering that the MacArthur Foundation believes writers can benefit society […]


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Ryan Adams and Mary-Louise Parker at the NYPL

NYCers, head to the New York Public Library this Friday for an exciting LIVE from the NYPL/Askashic event: Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams will discuss his new book, a collection of short fiction and poems called Hello, Sunshine, with that Weedstastic actress of stage-and-screen, Mary-Louise Parker. The details: When: Friday, September 25, 2009, 6:00pm Where: Celeste Bartos Forum, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (5th Avenue & 42nd St.) What it costs: $25 general admission; $15 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification. For more information, and to buy tickets, click here. Via Akashic’s website, here is Parker on Adams: “Ryan Adams writes […]


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HuffPo Books!

by Celeste Ng

It was selected as one of Time magazine’s Top 25 Blogs of 2009. The Observer (UK) went one step further and named it the most powerful blog in the world. According to Technorati, it’s the most linked-to blog on the Internet. And its founder, Arianna Huffington, came in at #12 in Forbes ‘ 2009 list of the most influential women in the media. Now the Huffington Post is starting–drumroll please!–a book section. Last Tuesday the New York Observer announced that HuffPo’s new book section would launch October 5th under the editorship of Amy Hertz, an editor-at-large for Penguin’s Dutton division. […]


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book blogs heart novellas

Over at The Fiction Desk, Rob explores why novellas might be ideal subjects for book bloggers; might this, in turn, inspire more novella-writing? Despite their increasing importance to the industry, bloggers don’t (or rarely) get paid, and so the time they can dedicate to their book coverage is limited by work and family commitments. On top of this, it’s important to keep blogs going with fresh new content, and if your content is book reviews, those hours can really add up. Novellas may be the perfect format: often as substantial as longer novels, more “newsworthy” than short stories as they’re […]


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New features on Fiction Writers Review

If you haven’t visited the Features side of FWR this month, I highly recommend it. – Our most recent offering is an essay with original illustrations by novelist Sarah Van Arsdale about the experience of reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain while recovering from a major, invasive surgery. – T. M. De Vos (of Many Mountains Moving) reviews Aleksandar Hemon’s new story collection, Love and Obstacles. – Comestibles‘ Kathryn McGowan serves up recipes-in-context from The Time Traveler’s Wife in her Novel Dishes column (three so far, with another to come this Friday — here are installments I, II, and III). […]


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Dispatch From Bread Loaf #4: What I Learned from Ann Hood

by Celeste Ng

With all the posts on lectures and readings, you may be surprised to hear that we had any time to workshop at the conference at all. I was very lucky to be in Ann Hood’s workshop, as Ann offered specific concrete approaches to thinking about plot, theme, tension, and all of those nebulous concepts fiction writers have to deal with. We had a lot of novel excerpts in the class, so much of the workshop discussion focused on issues of the novel rather than the short story—a change from the norm. Fellow Bread Loafer Eugene Cross has written an account […]


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Say You're One of Them is Oprah Book Club pick!!

Warm congratulations, Uwem. FWR is thrilled that so many more people will know about and read your stories because of this endorsement. And Oprah, kudos for picking a story collection! Learn more about Say You’re One of Them here; read “An Ex-Mas Feast,” the collection’s first story (previously published in the New Yorker); and check out FWR Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin’s interview with Uwem (for Granta).


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Buy a book for a public school library!

Via Jeffrey Rotter: ReadThis is a great organization “devoted to promoting access to books and reading wherever needed.” Among other projects, they helped create a library last spring for the public middle/high school Brooklyn Collegiate. Now you can help stock this library by clicking here and buying a book (chosen by the school to fill gaps) from Book Culture for for its collection. ReadThis will pay shipping, and the bookstore will donate 15% of sales for each book back to the school as a donation. In one swoop you’ll be supporting a library and an independent bookstore. Geri Ellner, Library […]


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Sirenland 2010: workshop your writing in Italy

So…who wants to spend a week with One Story magazine at this hotel in Positano, Italy, engaging in a series of advanced fiction- and memoir-writing workshops with Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, and Ron Carlson; giving and attending readings; and dining with a view of the Tirreno Sea? Submissions are open from now through October 31 for the third annual Sirenland Writers Conference (March 21-27, 2010). As someone lucky enough to have been workshopped by Shepard once, I urge other writers to jump at any chance to discuss work with him! Visit the Sirenland website to learn more about the conference […]


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at the cocktail party, with the birds

As you can see on the left sidebar, FWR is now Twitterpated (name: “fictionwriters”). Come follow us… I had mixed feelings at first about tweeting. It’s one thing to offer readers detours and chances to read more about an author, book, or issue via hyperlinks, but as an all-volunteer labor-of-love site, did we really need to maintain multiple online presences? There seemed something homey and focused — and time-efficient — about just being and not tweeting about it. But ultimately, we’d love to let more readers know about us, to reach out to new potential writers, and to establish more […]




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