Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

Shop Talk |

tattooed with lit

by Celeste Ng

If you have a literary tattoo, consider submitting it for this anthology by independent editors Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge: All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. […]


Interviews |

Finding the Narrative: A Conversation with Sung J. Woo

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Sung J. Woo was born in Korea and immigrated to the United States with his mother and two sisters when he was ten years old. Several years earlier, his father had moved to this country in order to establish a small business–a small, Asian-themed store in a mall in New Jersey–which would one day serve as the basis for the setting of Sung Woo’s debut novel, Everything Asian. Captured with humor and generosity, the book chronicles one year in the lives of the Kim family as they adjust to a new life in the United States and interact with fellow shopkeepers at Peddlers Town.

Woo spoke with Jeremiah Chamberlin on May 15th during the Ann Arbor Book Festival.


Shop Talk |

Short Story Special

by Celeste Ng

The Guardian has put out its annual Short Story Special, featuring work by Dave Eggers, A.M. Homes, David Mitchell, William Boyd, and Julie Myerson. This year, the Special also includes six short stories written by Guardian readers, culled from a pool of almost 2,000 by judges William Boyd and Julie Myerson. The winning story, “Broken Crockery,” is the publishing debut (!) of Lisa Blower, who is studying creative writing at Bangor University. Here’s an excerpt: Mum says my nan’s in hospital with Margaret Thatcher. […] My nan doesn’t like Margaret Thatcher because she’d kicked women in the shins and blew […]


Shop Talk |

recommended writers-on-writing: big think

by Anne Stameshkin

Earlier this year, Celeste and I blogged about how much FWR loves the TED series, in which speakers give a short talk about one topic of their choosing. Another site, big think–which describes itself as “a global forum connecting people and ideas”–also offers hundreds of short video interviews, plenty of which would be interesting to writers or useful for writing teachers. Indulge in some healthy procrastination from your novel, syllabus, or deadline project by checking out a few samples: * Elizabeth Gilbert discusses what it means when we call a book “Chick Lit” and shares some of her ideas about […]


Shop Talk |

library of Awesome

by Anne Stameshkin

These photos of the DOK Library Concept Center (Holland) by Jenny Levine, “The Shifted Librarian” on flickr, are like porn if you love libraries, modern architecture, and books. The mission of this library is, at least in part, to be a fun, inviting space–one where kids can stand on the furniture and eat while they read, and where books are integrated with music, games, and other media. Reading becomes socially awesome. And yet DOK also values reading’s solitary nature by providing–as an alternative to the wide-open, light-soaked spaces–nooks and secret rooms where readers can lose themselves in a book. Surrounding […]


Essays |

Quotes & Notes: Writing What's Yours, When It's Yours to Write

by Steven Wingate

“You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded.”
— Zora Neale Hurston

Consider Hurston’s words in the context of note-taking and revision, which we normally don’t think of as particularly inspired phases of the fiction process. Preparing the canvas can be a long and dreadful bore; we learn about our characters in slow motion, wanting to write the work itself but knowing that we aren’t yet ready. We synopsize, sometimes outline, sometimes take copious notes that we then ignore completely.


Shop Talk |

The Lovely Bones trailer

by Celeste Ng

Paramount has just revealed the trailer for the film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. The film, directed by Peter Jackson, stars Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz, and Saoirse Ronan (Briony in the movie version Atonement, and no stranger to literary adaptations). I had a hard time imagining how this book would be made into a movie, and the trailer reminded me–strangely enough–of the Harry Potter films: a human world and a magical world running in parallel; fantastical CGI effects, like a giant rose blooming underwater; scary woods, and the hunt for a Very Bad Man. Meanwhile, the […]


Shop Talk |

the used book wars

by Celeste Ng

An agent once told me that if I wanted to support my fellow writers, I should never buy used books, because the author gets no royalties on re-sold copies. And while that is certainly true, this editorial in the Guardian makes an eloquent argument for why secondhand bookshops are important: [T]he best have stock that is old – an out-of-print Penguin on Imagist poets, or a Fontana reader bringing news (at least it would have been in 1981) from the sociological front – and temptingly affordable. They contain treasure, however dusty. Several commenters point out that this editorial makes no […]


Shop Talk |

Infinite Summer with DFW

by Anne Stameshkin

Slate reports on Infintesummer.org, a reading-group/support group combo for those grieving David Foster Wallace‘s death and those wanting to tackle his masterwork. The challenge: Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat. 1. Plus endnotesa. a. A lot of them. Posts range from in-depth analysis of Wallace’s themes to close readings of favorite passages to humorous accounts of how people react when they see you toting around this giant book. (Really!) If you want […]


Shop Talk |

On an optimistic note…

by Celeste Ng

There’s plenty for writers to worry about these days: the future of literary fiction, the collapsing publishing industry, the economy in general. So here’s a much-needed note of optimism. On the Penguin Blog, Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng and More Than It Hurts You) reminds us about the joys of being a writer. These are, as the whole world knows, tough days for literary fiction. And it’s never been the easiest career, even in boom times. Rejection. Financial uncertainty. Mean or dense critics. Good publishers that nevertheless have, at the end of each quarter, to answer to corporate […]




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