Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

Shop Talk |

"Work with the puppy that is your brain"

by Celeste Ng

It’s easy to be hard on yourself when you’re a writer. But does beating yourself up really help? For 99.9% of us, the answer is no. How do you learn to go easier on yourself? The Rejectionist is here to help: So imagine you have a new puppy, and your new puppy does the things that new puppies do, which are: pee on the floor, eat your favorite shoes, poop in your laundry hamper, chew on your plants, chase the cat. Right? Bad things. Now, how do you deal effectively with the misbehaviors of the new puppy, which does not […]


Shop Talk |

Literature, drop by drop, on dripread

by Celeste Ng

For those of us trying to sneak reading into our busy lives, DailyLit is a great resource: choose any of its 1000ish titles, and it will email you a snippet a day until you finish the book. (See our blog archive for more details.) But what if you want to read something that’s not in DailyLit’s library–or if you’ve already read all of DailyLit’s titles, you speed-reader, you? Enter dripread, which functions in much the same way but, in addition to a library of titles, allows you to upload a book of your own choosing in ePub format. Says the […]


Interviews |

How to Leave and Why You Stay: An Interview with Jennine Capó Crucet

by Melissa Scholes Young

When The Clash asked the question “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Jennine Capó Crucet had an answer. In How to Leave Hialeah, Crucet’s debut short story collection, characters wrestle with how the places they’re from shape their identity, how to grow beyond them, and why leaving is sometimes the only answer.


Shop Talk |

We're going to miss almost everything

by Celeste Ng

NPR commentator Linda Holmes has a beautiful essay on how we’re going to miss almost everything—and why that’s okay: Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It’s the sorting of what’s worth your time and what’s not worth your time. It’s saying, “I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it.” It’s saying, “I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so I’m not going to read this one.” Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time […]


Shop Talk |

Journal of the Week Subscription Winners: NANO Fiction

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our NANO Fiction Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Jesse the Mutt (@MutteringMutt) Lively Words (@livelywords) Marilyn G (@nocommentry) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to NANO Fiction! Please email us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information, and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed Carolyn Gan’s profile of NANO Fiction and her exclusive interview with founding editor Kirby Johnson, you can read the whole thing in our archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal giveaways, please […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson. Published this month by Ecco, the book is Wilson’s first novel. He is also the author of the award-winning story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, which was selected as a favorite and included in our “Books We Loved in 2009” Valentine’s Day special feature. Wilson’s writing has appeared in such places as Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, PANK, Mid-American Review, and dozens of other publications. His short fiction has also been anthologized in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The […]


Essays |

[POETRY FOR PROSERS] "We have poets? Do they wear capes?": A sort-of review of David Orr’s Beautiful and Pointless (and some meditations on poets and poetry)

by Katie Umans

Why did I feel such hope when I first heard about David Orr’s new book, Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry? I’ve read my share of poetry guides, and most of them have taken up residence in a particularly dusty neighborhood on my poetry bookshelf. But Orr’s book had a title that pretty much summed up my own weary but hopeful sentiments about contemporary poetry.


Shop Talk |

What Makes Gatsby Great

by J.T. Bushnell

When I heard The Great Gatsby had been rewritten for intermediate readers, I did what many lovers of the novel probably did—checked the online version to see how my favorite passage had been changed, shook my fist, and then re-read the original, penciling all kinds of ecstatic remarks into the margins. In case you missed Celeste’s post, Macmillan has released a simplified version of the novel as “retold by Margaret Tarner.” Essentially, it relates the events of the Gatsby story without all the big words and elaboration. And so my favorite passage, two beautiful paragraphs of imagery and movement and […]


Shop Talk |

Facebook: Friend or Foe?

by Celeste Ng

Facebook: it’s the bane of every writer’s existence–at least, every writer I know. You sit down at your computer to work. Maybe you even get started on your latest story. Then you need to look something up. You open up your browser. And it calls to you. Come on. Just check me quickly. Don’t you want to know what your friends are up to? What are you waiting for? NEWS IS HAPPENING AND YOU ARE MISSING IT! Yet Facebook can provide huge benefits to writers as well. In the Michigan Quarterly Review, author (and FWR contributor) Preeta Samarasan explains why […]


Shop Talk |

Books all over the house

by Celeste Ng

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.” ~ Horace Mann To help you on that front, here’s a roundup of ways to work books into your home decor–everywhere. As planters An acupuncturist (and apparent book lover) gives a step-by-step tutorial on transforming books into planters for succulents: As nightstands Galleycat spotlights this nightstand made out of books, on etsy: In the bathroom Yes, really. Design blog Apartment Therapy offers inspiration for combing these unlikely […]




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