In his novel Animals, we follow Don LePan’s characters into a not-too-distant future, where human beings with birth defects are slaughtered as edible products. Readers’ sense of injustice will be roused by LePan’s descriptions of suffering in the feedlots–but can a novel inspire us to stop eating factory-farmed meat? Laura Roberts hopes it can.
We’ve talked about furniture made of books here before, but Big Cozy Books takes things to a whole other level. Designer Erik Olofson creates upholstered furniture pieces that look like giant books. The company offers loveseats, benches, booths, each with a specific title. They’re marketed towards schools and libraries, but if you’re looking to splurge for a young (or not-so-young) reader in your life, wouldn’t these be amazing? They sure look comfy: Visit the Big Cozy Books website to find a dealer near you. And check back here at the FWR blog every day in December for another bookish gift […]
It’s sold under the rather prosaic name Metal Pen, but I prefer to think of it as the Perpetual Pen. Here’s the description: In the Medieval period, artists and scribes often used a metal stylus in order to draw on a specially prepared paper surface. Generally known as Metalpoint, or Silverpoint when the stylus was made of silver, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Rembrandt all used this technique. […] The pens we sell are a modern version (and do not use silver). The solid metal ‘nib’ consists of a metal alloy, that leaves a mark on most […]
This week’s feature is Debra Allbery’s new poetry collection, Fimbul-Winter. The book was published last year by Four Way Books and was the recipient of the 2010 Grub Street National Poetry Prize. Allbery is also the author of a previous collection of poems, Walking Distance, which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh. New poems are forthcoming in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Kenyon Review. She lives near Asheville, NC, and is the Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is also a recent contributor for […]
You’ve probably read about Amazon’s most recent promotion–they encouraged customers to use their price-check app in stores, scan an item, and then get an extra 5% discount for buying that item on Amazon instead. This promotion occasioned much ranting, including a piece by Richard Russo in the Times, and then a rant from an opposing perspective by Farhad Manjoo in Slate. It won’t surprise regular readers of this site, which routinely suggests buying from independent bookstores and which links to Powell’s most often, rather than Amazon (though we get no kickback from Powell’s, we just like them), to learn that […]
I am perpetually cold, and it’s especially a problem when I’m writing. Cold fingers are stiff fingers, and whether I’m typing or writing longhand, stiff fingers are slow. Result: typos, time wasted correcting errors, paragraphs where I have no idea what I meant to say, train of thought quickly derailed. If your writer-friend suffers from the same affliction, perhaps these heated gloves are the solution. They’re fingerless for easy typing and plug into the USB port of your computer. Available from Perpetual Kid, they warm your hands 10 degrees in 5 minutes and also come in a snazzy purple or […]
Last week we featured A Public Space as our Journal-of-the-Week, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Kelly Luce (@lucekel) Kristy Strick (@cstrickwrites) Maureen Sherbondy (@msherbondy) To claim your free subscription, 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!
“What a bitch of a thing prose is!” Gustave Flaubert wrote in a letter to his lover Louise Colet in 1852. “It’s never finished; there’s always something to redo. Yet I think one can give it the consistency of verse. A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.” In this essay, contributing editor Travis Holland meditates on Flaubert’s influence and legacy in fiction.
Did you encounter The Mysteries of Harris Burdick when you were a kid? If so, you probably remember Chris Van Allsburg’s eerie black-and-white illustrations and the evocative sentences—each the merest sliver of a story—that accompanied them. When I was in fifth grade, my teacher asked us to choose a picture and write a story to go along with it. I chose the one to the right, which was titled “Archie Smith, Boy Wonder” and bore the caption, “A tiny voice asked, ‘Is he the one?’” No, I’m not going to share the story. But the fact that I remember the […]
Maybe yesterday’s minimalist book ring wasn’t your style. Want to wear the words you love—literally? Littlefly, a UK-based jewelry company, offers these gorgeous gems by designer Jeremy May. Explains their website: Littlefly paper jewellery is made by laminating hundreds sheets of paper together, then carefully finishing to a high gloss. The paper is selected and carefully removed from a book, and the jewellery re-inserted in the excavated space. Each piece is impossible to replicate, and is unique to the wearer. The beauty of the jewels extends within the piece: text and images pass all the way though the object, only […]
