[Reviewlet] Crazy Season, by Paul Graham
A debut collection focused on quiet lives that intersect, collide, and separate – forever altered by the encounter.
A debut collection focused on quiet lives that intersect, collide, and separate – forever altered by the encounter.
Over at The Jewish Daily Forward, FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus has written a moving piece about the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics of 1972 and how this event found their way into her fiction. Erika writes about how her classmates challenged her use of this history: When I workshopped “Homecomings,” several classmates thought that my inclusion of the 1972 Munich Olympics was extraneous. The story of Jewish refugees returning to their homeland was “powerful enough,” they argued. My story “didn’t need” the added layer of history I’d given it. Incredulous, I broke the cardinal workshop rule […]
Author Maureen Johnson went to the FedEx store to mail a package to her publisher. Absurdist comedy ensued: FEDEX GUY spins package around, examines label, frowns. FEDEX GUY: I can’t send this. MAUREEN stares, waiting for further explanation. When none is forthcoming, she spins the package back around and looks at the label, because apparently she is going to have to figure out what it is that she didn’t put on it. Because it’s not just a delivery service-it’s a TEST OF WITS. Finding no blank spaces, she feels like a bit of a FedEx failure. MAUREEN: Why? FEDEX: (very […]
A zombie wanders a big-box store, terrifying employees. A company that outsources grief. Yu serves up the human condition with a SciFi twist.
A friend of mine once admitted to being obsessed with dashes. She said it like she was admitting to a clandestine affair–bashfully yet boldly: “I LOVE the dash.” When she said that, I felt a pang of jealousy. For I, too, love the dash, and I am not good at sharing things I love. Perhaps you, too, adore a particular piece of punctuation: the workhorse comma, the sophisticated semicolon, the much-maligned interrobang. Author Leah Petersen (via) offers a humorous guide to what this favorite punctuation mark says about you: Period (.): Type A personality. You are decisive and clear. You […]
While talking with a fellow writer–call her A—I described a friend—call him B—as looking like “a young Charles Baxter.” A’s eyes lit up. “Really?” she said. “So he’s really hot?” This was not precisely what I had meant, but the truth is that Charles Baxter is the kind of writer who inspires serious literary crushes—which I think might be the most powerful kind of crush in existence. Adoration of a story well told, and all the emotions that the best writing stirs up, combines with adoration of the prose itself—the signature stylistic quirks that are as idiosyncratic as a beloved […]
What do books about octogenarians share with teen vampire novels? Four recent books with more angst than a high school cafeteria.
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. Requiem, by Frances Itani: We try to spotlight emerging authors here at FWR, and I thought I was living up to that mission when I began looking into Requiem, by the Canadian […]
Our new feature is Howard L. Anderson’s debut novel, Albert of Adelaide (Twelve). As described on his author page on the publisher’s website, “Howard L. Anderson has had a varied life: He flew with a helicopter battalion in Vietnam, worked on fishing boats in Alaska, in the steel mills of Pittsburgh, as a truck driver in Houston, and a scriptwriter in Hollywood, and, after gaining a law degree, became legal counsel for the New Mexico Organized Crime Commission. He is currently a defense attorney in New Mexico, where he defends Mexican nationals charged with crimes north of the border.” His […]
Last week we featured Monkeybicycle as our Journal of the Week, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Lynne Perednia (@Perednia ) Lynne Barrett (@LynneBarrett ) Kelly Luce (@lucekel) Congrats! To claim your free subscription, 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! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!
