Last week we featured Slice as our Journal-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Elena Mauli Shapiro (@elenamshapiro) Brian Henry (@brianhenry63) Josh Loomis (@bluinkalchemist) 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!
Ethereal mashed potatoes, langoustines in Moët, cherries fit for a queen. N. M. Kelby’s novel, White Truffles in Winter is a sumptuous feast, the celebration of food and table only outdone by the seductive women who surround French chef Auguste Escoffier. Hungry? Read on.
Are “readable” and “plot-driven” now backhanded compliments for books? At The Star, Bert Archer argues that there’s nothing wrong with “readable” books (via): You could make snide comparisons to see-ability in art and hear-ability in music, but I think the best analogy might be livability and architecture. Can a house be excellent if it is not also livable? If you find yourself stumbling on the stairs because they’re not big enough for your feet, or if you get wet when it rains because there are cleverly carved holes in the roof, I would say you have a legitimate complaint against […]
At first blush, few people are less like rock stars than writers. Generally speaking, we avoid the spotlight. We don’t have cool outfits, we don’t have groupies, and our tours are waaaay less flashy–and lucrative–than musicians’. But deep down there’s some connection between writing and rock. Lots of authors have compiled playlists for their books, most noteably on David Gutowski’s Largehearted Boy’s “Book Notes” section. It sounds like a recent trend, but it’s been going on for a while, according to Salon: Since 2005, in the site’s recurring Book Notes column, authors including Bret Easton Ellis, Sloane Crosley, Karen Russell, […]
The Millions has a wonderful essay by Jeffrey Eugenides on his process of writing his latest novel, The Marriage Plot. It began with what he called “an act of literary adultery”: In the late 90s, during an impasse in the writing of Middlesex, I put the manuscript aside. (I hadn’t fallen out of love, exactly, but I wasn’t sure where the relationship was headed.) Over the following weeks I began flirting with another novel, not a comic epic like Middlesex but a more traditional story about a wealthy family throwing a debutante party. At first, the new novel seemed to […]
Is there anything more disrespectful to a book–and its authors and would-be readers–than burning? Book burnings are inevitably associated with censorship and repressive ideology, from the Third Reich to the more recent Quran-burning controversy. Even without those connotations, burning any book–for any reason–sends a shiver down my spine. But can book-burning sometimes be justified? On Cracked, S. Peter Davis writes about book-burnings that are occurring now, all over many countries–and why: For the past year or so, part of my job has been to walk through library warehouses and destroy tens of thousands of often old and irreplaceable books. […] […]
Back in high school, I had a book called How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening, which described itself as “A Collection of Literary Encapsulations” and contained classic works of literature in short, usually silly poems. For example, The Great Gatsby began thusly: Nick Carraway and Gatsby (Jay) Are next-door neighbors; every day The enigmatic Gatsby gazes Towards a distant green light (Daisy’s). Cute, right? But it seems some people took the book at face value, expecting to catch up on the Western canon in just a few hours. Says one review of the book on Goodreads: I had […]
Last week we featured Chronic City as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Holly Weiss (@HWeissauthor) Michelle Bond (@1coffeebreak) Carol Kania (@CKania) To claim your free, signed 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!
Brooklyn-based Slice, our latest Journal of the Week, features work by new writers next to interviews by legendary authors–and proves you can be a successful literary magazine without kicking the competition.
My sister’s favorite joke in college was this: Two penguins are in the bathtub, and one of them says, “Could you please pass the soap?” The other replies, “What do I look like, a typewriter?” Get it? Neither do I (even with Wikipedia’s help)–though it does make me laugh now, because it made her laugh so hard. Anyway, typewriters are, as they say, having a moment. When Anthropologie offers a USB typewriter that works with your iPad, you know something is afoot. But even more fascinating than the reemergence of physical typewriters themselves is the coverage typewriters–and the art of […]
