Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Salvage the Bones

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Jesmyn Ward’s National Book Award winning novel, Salvage the Bones, which was published last year by Bloomsbury. Ward is also the author of Where the Line Bleeds (Agate, 2008), which was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award recipient, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan in 2005, was a Stegner Fellow from 2008-2010, and served as the 2010-2011 John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of […]


Shop Talk |

Journal-of-the-Week Winners: Lapham's Quarterly

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Lapham’s Quarterly as our Journal-of-the-Week, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: William Walsh (@Questionstruck) tfullard (@tfullard) Ms. Understood (@MartyChev) Congrats! To claim your free issue, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books and journals out there! Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the prizes as subscriptions, not issues.  We apologize for the error!


Shop Talk |

24 Magazine

by Celeste Ng

Running a journal—selecting content, editing, finding just the right images—takes a lot of time. (Trust us: we know!) So when I heard about Twenty-Four Magazine, I was flabbergasted. You see, Twenty-Four Magazine just put out its first issue last month, and they did it all—the concept, the writing, the publishing, the design—in just twenty-four hours. Why? Here’s what the group said on their site: Because it means that the magazine’s production will become an event that anyone can follow, and the process becomes a part of the product. Because a time-based model makes continuing the magazine more sustainable: it’s a […]


Shop Talk |

The Story Prize goes to …

by Lee Thomas

Steven Millhauser! Yes, I know that news broke last week. But Anne and I attended the event on behalf of FWR – quite the literary crowd, Hannah Tinti further down our row, spotted Paul Vidich in the aisle. Here are some highlights: Don Delillo described going back to stories he’d written in the late 1970s and early 80s and not changing anything. Oh, wait, he took out all the semicolons, colons, and commas that magazine editors had introduced. He said it best: “I was a free man.” Cormac McCarthy, eat your heart out. Steven Millhauser, white floss of hair aglow […]


Interviews |

Surfers and Cowboys: An Interview with Robert Garner McBrearty

by Steven Wingate

Beneath an unassuming demeanor, Pushcart Prize-winning Robert Garner McBrearty writes stories of the revolution. The former dishwasher on the mythologies of the American West, the bravery of small presses, Colonel William B. Travis, and why he feels solidarity with scrappy underlings.


Shop Talk |

The Consequence of Skating: Today's B&N Daily NOOK Find

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Most of our readers know Steven Gillis as the founder of 826michigan in Ann Arbor, or as the co-founder and publisher of the non-profit literary press Dzanc Books. Yet Steve is also a talented writer. He is the author of four novels as well as a collection of stories, his short fiction has appeared in dozens of literary journals, and he’s been nominated for six Pushcarts. Most recently, his novel The Consequence of Skating was a 2011 finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award. And today the book is a B&N Daily NOOK Find, available for only $3.50. I happen to […]


Shop Talk |

Mommy, where do blurbs come from?

by Celeste Ng

The always-fascinating TYWKIWDBI points us to the origin of the blurb. According to Wikipedia, The word blurb originated in 1907. American humorist Gelett Burgess’s short 1906 book Are You a Bromide? was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess’ publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, “the picture of a damsel — languishing, heroic, or coquettish — anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel” In this case the jacket proclaimed “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’!” and the […]


Shop Talk |

Book-of-the-Week Winners: Fires of our Choosing

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Eugene Cross’s debut collection Fires of Our Choosing as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Marisa Birns (@marisabirns) Amanda Persaud (@afavolosa) Colleen (@booksnyc) Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!


Reviews |

Journal of the Week: Lapham's Quarterly

by Carolyn Gan

Our latest Journal of the Week, Lapham’s Quarterly, is a true curator of culture. By juxtaposing the old and the new, Carolyn Gan says in this profile, it’s the “literary equivalent of a really good mix tape, where obscure songs of various styles come together to tell you something more about the music.”


Shop Talk |

Love it, or hate it?

by Celeste Ng

Is it better to be the only one who loves an unpopular book, or the only one who hates a popular book? Thanks to the Tumblr site I Love Charts, you can now weigh the pros and cons: . Further Reading: Why liking a book—or its popularity—shouldn’t be part of a good review Rick Moody is a popular author writers love to hate. What’s the deal with that?




Literary Partners