Donald Lystra, who published his first novel Season of Water and Ice after retiring from a career as an engineer, talks about making the transition from engineering to writing, publishing with a small press, winning a Midwest Book Award, and what people get wrong about the 1950s.
The winners of the prestigious PEN Literary awards were recently announced–and we’re proud to have featured some of the winners and judges right here on Fiction Writers Review. Here are the main winners for fiction: PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize ($25,000): To a fiction writer whose debut work, published in 2010, represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. This year, the judges have chosen two winners to share the award. Susanna Daniel, Stiltsville (FWR interview here) Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (FWR interview here) Runner up: Teddy Wayne, Kapitoil Judges: Susan Cheever, Paul Harding, and Yiyun […]
When you’re on a first date, what’s the first question you ask? “What do you do?” “Where did you grow up?” “What did you think of Inception?” Maybe you should ask “Who’s your favorite author?” Thought Catalog presents this handy (though somewhat tongue-in-cheek) guide to personalities based on favorite authors. For example, love Tao Lin? 3. Tao Lin If your favorite author is Tao Lin, you’re the type of introspective person who recognizes absurdity in typical daily behavior. You’re most likely a combination of all or some of the following: hipster, twee, Into Literature, shy/ anxious/ curious/ depressed, Poet, and […]
Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.
Forget New Year’s Day: I think fall might be the time that writers make all their resolutions. As the summer winds to a close, students prepare for a new school year. Teachers polish old syllabi and draw up new ones. Publishers, editors, and agents return from the Hamptons. And writers everywhere make themselves promises to buckle down and get back to work. If you’re one of the latter, you may find these practical tips on writing a book helpful. Culled from 22 established writers, the list has lots of ideas for making THIS the year you finish your book at […]
Netflix revolutionized the movie-rental industry when it launched, allowing subscribers to have movies sent to their homes and keep them as long as they wanted, all for a monthly fee. (Okay, until recently.) The site BookPig aims to do the same for children’s books, which are (1) expensive and (2) quickly outgrown. Says the site: When you are ready for more books, just return the first set in the pre-paid mailer provided and we’ll “swap” them for the next set of books from your queue! For faster turnaround, we recommend that you log in and use the “Instant Return” feature […]
This week’s feature is Jim Cohee’s novel The Swan. Cohee, a retired editor for Sierra Club Books, lives in San Francisco. This is his first book. This novel is also one of the first titles to be released from Break Away Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press. Edited by Susan Neville and Michael Martone, this series will focus on “fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and poetry with a Midwest connection.” Like Switchgrass Books, the imprint of Northern Illinois University Press, which launched in the fall of 2009, the goal of this series is to feature work that is rooted in […]
Last week we featured The Family Fang as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Kristin Costa (@antaram310) Monique Nerestan (@modiva70) Jonny Zine (@interrobangzine) To claim your signed copy of this novel, 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!
Recently Chip Cheek, a writer and the administration coordinator at Grub Street in Boston, quit his job—even though he loved it. He explains why in an essay on Grub Street’s blog: I have always had a full-time job, even while I was getting my MFA. It has seemed the prudent thing to do: keep a steady, reasonably well-paid job, so you can dedicate all your worrying to writing. It’s a good idea; Flaubert said something similar, although Flaubert didn’t have to worry about actually having a job. Also he took forever to write his books. Over time, in this multitasking, […]
So you’re hanging out with some writer-friends on a Saturday night. Perhaps you’re gathered your salon sipping absinthe, or–let’s be realistic, here–snuggled up on hand-me-down sofas drinking Yellowtail and arguing about why people don’t read short stories. (Uh, just me?) Anyway, at some point you call a truce in the debate on whether “chick lit” is a useful term, or you call a halt to the V.S. Naipaul-bashing. How to occupy yourselves now? By playing a literary board game, of course. In the New York Times, Dwight Gardner outlines something he calls “the paperback game“: One player, the “picker” for […]
