In Icelandic author Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets, the narrator spends the novel hiding under his bed as his “friends,” who assume he isn’t home, gather in his apartment. Aaron Cance reviews this voyeuristic tale, its quirky narrative, and its debt to Moby Dick.
How have I not heard of this site before? BookMooch allows you to trade books you don’t want for books you do—by mail, with a little help from the internet. Here’s how it works, according to the site: You earn points when you: Type books in: enter books you own and want to give away. Each book typed in gets you 1/10th of a point. Give books away: respond to a mooch request, and send your book to them. 1 point awarded, 3 points if sent to another country. Acknowledge Receipt: after you receive a book, leave feedback for the […]
AWP provided a perfect opportunity to discover what has captured the imaginations of fellow writers with vastly different viewpoints. One such writer is Eric Hendrixson, who introduced me to Bizarro fiction. As Hendrixson described his novel, Bucket of Face, I realized I’d been completely unaware of this genre that Horror World calls “the literary equivalent of a David Lynch or a Tim Burton film.” Hendrixson kindly offered to answer some of my novice questions. Define Bizarro fiction. Bizarro is literature of the weird. This isn’t the same thing as experimental fiction, which is weird in its structure and sometimes unreadable. […]
Rebecca Makkai’s Professor Alex Moore is one of the most memorable characters in 2010’s Best American Short Stories. Not just because she accidentally kills an albatross while hunting ducks in Australia, or because as a teacher of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” she becomes a minor celebrity on campus due to the ironic crime, but because that one pull of the trigger sets forth a steady unraveling of her personal and professional lives—so thorough a deconstruction that the reader soon joins Moore in doubting its authenticity. The conclusion to Makkai’s “Painted Ocean, Painted Ship” does what you would expect a […]
Last week we featured Carin Clevidence’s debut novel The House on Salt Hay Road as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Stephen Long, Linda White, and Alexandra Timm. Congratulations! To claim your signed copy of this novel, please email us at the following address: winners@fictionwritersreview.com To anyone who’d like to be eligible for our future drawings, visit our Facebook Page and “like” us. No catch, no gimmicks–just a great way to promote books we love. To everyone who’s already a fan, big thanks!
How do you decide what books to read next? Do you judge by the cover? Do you buy what’s handy and cheap? You could get a recommendation from a friend, but that can be risky. Enter Discovereads, a startup now run by Goodreads. Rate at least 10 books, and the site uses an algorithm to “learn your personal tastes” and recommend books it thinks you’ll like. Goodreads plans to add Discovereads to its own site soon, as well. The New York Times’s “Bits” blog reports: Otis Chandler, Goodreads’s founder and chief executive, says the site [Goodreads] has been an online […]
Since launching in September, Fiction Writers Review’s “Book of the Week” promotion has shipped dozens of books to dozens of states. A few weeks back, we extended the promotion to highlight literary journals as well. Our inaugural “Journal of the Week” post featured One Story, and in addition to an exclusive interview with Associate Editor Marie-Helene Bertino, the post offered three free One Story subscriptions to our followers on Twitter. Congrats to our winners: Helen Smith (@emperorsclothes), Kenneth Jarman (@Krjarman), and Hank Nielsen (@hheerup). You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to One Story! Please contact us at winners [at] […]
Every few weeks, we launch a new Fiction Writers Review “Flipbook.” During the past two and a half years, we’ve featured more than 50 interviews with authors established and emerging. They’ve had such valuable insights into the writing life—from thoughts on process and craft to ideas about community and influence—that we wanted to find a way to further these conversations within our community. Each Flipbook highlights some of the very best of the conversations on our site, centered around a particular topic. Our latest Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive slide right here on […]
In this conversation with FWR’s Laura Valeri, Susanna Daniel discusses her debut novel, the fictional memoir Stiltsville, and shares her insights on the process of writing, the power of quiet stories—which she terms eminently readable—and the perseverance and faith that writers must nurture for their own work.
Print book aficionados, here’s a little treat: a video on how a book was made in 1947. (My favorite part? How the author is “finished” writing his story as soon as the last page leaves the typewriter—and the book has a publisher immediately. Ah, if only…) Via. More interested in all the stuff that comes before printing—and how that works today? Mediabistro has released a four-minute video that outlines the process of finding an agent, finding a publisher, and getting publicity:
