Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

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Hot off the Presses: 2011 National Book Award Finalists Announced!

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Approximately one hour ago, the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards were announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s morning radio program, Think Out Loud. The event took place in front of a live audience at the new Literary Arts Center in Portland, Oregon, at approximately 9am Pacific Time. And we’re pleased to announce that some of our favorite fiction titles last year have been selected. Congratulations to: Fiction: Andrew Krivak for The Sojourn Tea Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife Julie Otsuka for The Buddha in the Attic Edith Pearlman for Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories Jesmyn Ward for Salvage […]


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Heathrow's writer-in-residence

by Celeste Ng

Does the above photo–of London’s Heathrow Airport–inspire you to write? English novelist Tony Parsons is hoping it will inspire him. Earlier this summer, Parsons spent a week in Heathrow as the airport’s writer-in-residence, working on a collection due out this month. Reports the airport’s press release: Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow will be Parsons’ 13th book and his first collection of short stories. Inspired by Airport, the 1960’s bestselling novel about a large metropolitan airport and the personalities of the people who use and rely on its operation, Parsons wants to revive this genre of airport fiction made famous by […]


Reviews |

The Box: Tales from the Darkroom by Günter Grass

by Gregory Parker

Germany’s literary superstar Günter Grass is obsessed with the past. His second memoir, The Box, challenges readers to distinguish between fact and fiction in latter half of the author’s life. His unconventional approach might undermine the memoir form, but the result is a compelling account of Grass’ compulsion to write.


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Book of the Week: How the Mistakes Were Made

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Tyler McMahon’s How the Mistakes Were Made, published this week by St. Martin’s Griffin. Born and raised in the Washington, DC area, Tyler McMahon studied at the University of Virginia and Boise State University. Before writing his first novel, he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, a surf instructor in California, and waiter in Montana. He co-edited the anthologies Surfing’s Greatest Misadventures and Fishing’s Greatest Misadventures for Casagrande Press. He lives in Honolulu with his wife, food writer Dabney Gough, and teaches in the English Department at Hawaii Pacific University. His short stories […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: Orientation

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Orientation as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: amyguglielmo (@amyguglielmo) Taisa Frank (@ThaisaFrank) Randy Simons (@RJSimonz) To claim your copy of this collection, 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!


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Writing without reading?

by Celeste Ng

Some frustrated soul on Facebook has started an “I Hate Reading” page. Even though–in keeping with the “I hate reading” theme–there’s nothing actually on the page, over 475,000 people “like” it. AbeBooks issued the following video, entitled “Long Live the Book,” in response: Okay, so some people hate to read. Some people aren’t book people. But some writers apparently also hate to read. On the New Yorker‘s Book Bench, Macy Halford writes: [William Giraldi] teaches writing at Boston University, and has been amazed at how many of the kids possess a passionate urge to write without also possessing an urge […]


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Is there space for "GAY" in "YA"?

by Celeste Ng

What if an agent agreed to represent your book–IF you changed the main character from gay to straight? That’s what happened to writers Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown and their YA novel, Stranger, according to a post they wrote in Publisher’s Weekly: Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing. An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us. The agent offered to sign […]


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Write Place, Write Time

by Celeste Ng

Write Place, Write Time offers a peek into different writers’ workspaces. Above, the writing spot of novelist Heidi Durrow. Here’s the ridiculously cool workspace of writer Alan Heathcock (seriously, I can’t believe this exists–read the whole post; I promise it’s worth it): Heathcock writes: My writing studio is a 1967 Roadrunner travel trailer that for most of its life was an Idaho State Police surveillance vehicle, and is now packed with books and trophies and random oddities. Inside, there’s old beautiful wood paneling, which smells like woods and feels like wood and feels cozy and connects me with reality. […] […]


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Desert Nights, Rising Stars: the Arizona State University writing conference

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Sponsored by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, the 2012 Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference will be held February 23-26 in Tempe.  The conference brings writers of all levels together for four days in Tempe to study fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. This year’s conference faculty includes Sally Ball, Robert Boswell, Bernard Cooper, Denise Duhamel, Carolyn Forche, Pam Houston, Adam Johnson, Mat Johnson, A. Van Jordan,  Antonya Nelson, Alix Ohlin, Jem Poster, Melissa Pritchard, Jeannine Savard, Eleanor Wilner and Xu Xi. Additional guests include: Norman Dubie, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Cynthia Hogue, T.R. Hummer, Tara […]




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