We’re delighted to announce the winners of our Flyway Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Tom Ryan (@crossroadskcmo) Diane Cook (@TheDMC) Jason Renshaw (@englishraven) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to Flyway! Please email us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information, and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of Flyway and the exclusive interview with Managing Editor Brenna Dixon and Fiction Editor Genevieve DuBois, you can read the whole thing in our blog archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal giveaways, […]
That’s the title of a hilarious video series by the cast of “The Importance of Being Earnest” on Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company. They ask an important question: What if the characters of Broadway’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” traveled through a time warp and woke up on the beach with Snooki, The Situation and the rest of the gang of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”? In an exclusive video series created for Playbill by “Earnest” stars Santino Fontana and David Furr, the Roundabout Theatre Company cast puts “Jersey” in the mouths of Oscar Wilde’s famed Britons. Think of it as a […]
Not a poet? Perhaps you are. David Brooks points out that we all use metaphors in our daily speech, all the time, without even knowing it: When talking about relationships, we often use health metaphors. A friend might be involved in a sick relationship. Another might have a healthy marriage. When talking about argument, we use war metaphors. When talking about time, we often use money metaphors. But when talking about money, we rely on liquid metaphors. We dip into savings, sponge off friends or skim funds off the top. Even the job title stockbroker derives from the French word […]
Debut novelist Jenny Shank brings her affection for the American West to The Ringer, a searing tale of racial and class tension set in contemporary Denver. As the Books & Writers Editor at NewWest.net, Shank champions stand-outs of the current Western-lit cannon.
For the past few weeks, book-loving Twitterers have been amusing themselves by coming up with Less Interesting Books. Here are a few of my favorites: The Devil Wears Hush Puppies (@TheJaneChannel) To Give a Mockingbird a Stern Talking To (@andrewvanorden) A Farewell to Arms: Coping with Amputation (@waltonky) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Glendale Galleria (@peteFweiss) The At-Times-Slightly-Unpleasant-But-Altogether-Perfectly-Manageable Lightness of Being (@mattmclowry) A Couple of Years of Solitude (@joefi) The great thing about hashtags like this is people keep coming up with more. Search for the #lessinterestingbooks tag on Twitter for more, and tell us yours in the comments. Via. […]
This week’s featured title is Valerie Laken’s story collection Separate Kingdoms, which we’re pleased to announce has recently been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award! Laken was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois. She majored in English and Russian at the University of Iowa, then worked and studied in Moscow, Prague, Krakow, and Madison, before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, she received an MA in Slavic Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, where she taught for several years. Her first novel, Dream House, was published in 2009. She is currently […]
We all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But now, with Ward Six’s handy Literary Blurb Translation Guide, you can judge it quickly and easily by the blurbs on that cover. Some examples: “luminous prose” = too many goddam words “unflinching artistry” = lots of boobs and stabbing “taut” = limited vocabulary “incredible range and breadth” = all over the place “trenchant satire” = poop jokes The commenters on the original post have added more, as have the folks at MetaFilter. Got more to contribute? Tell us in the comments.
In her first novel, Swamplandia! (Knopf, 2011), acclaimed short story writer Karen Russell (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves) renders a highly specific shoebox-world of wonder and mystery. Set in the Florida swamps, largely within a fictional alligator theme park, the sun rises and sets with her lush yet economical descriptions and poignant characterizations of the 14-year-old protagonist, Ava, and her rapidly dissolving family.
Last week, news sources everywhere reported that the popular blog “Gay Girl in Damascus” was not, in fact, written by a Syrian lesbian named Amina Arraf. Nor, as the blog claimed recently, had Amina been arrested by Syrian police. In fact, the blog was written by a 40-year-old American grad student, Tom MacMaster, who is living in Scotland. Amina does not exist. According to NPR, in his apology post on the blog, MacMaster defends himself by claiming he was writing fiction: I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs […]
