Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

Shop Talk |

AWP in photos

by Lee Thomas

This week we’re revisiting the 2011 AWP Conference in more ways than one. Yesterday we posted Jeremiah Chamberlin’s introductory talk for the AWP panel he moderated, “The Good Review: Criticism in the Age of Book Blogs and Amazon.com.” This morning, we posted Charles Baxter‘s discussion of “Owl Criticism” from the same panel. Stay tuned for two more essays by the panelists Stacey D’Erasmo (tomorrow) and Keith Taylor (Friday). Seeing so many contributors, and connecting with writers, teachers, publishers, agents and lit journals who share our enthusiasm for FWR, was amazing. It also reminded us of the vital role you, dear […]


Essays |

Owl Criticism

by Charles Baxter

In this essay, Baxter writes that a trustworthy review has “a kind of doubleness: the reviewer manages to assert somehow that the book under discussion is of some importance for one reason or another; and second, a good review provides a formal description of the book’s properties, so that you could reconstruct it from the reviewer’s sketch of it.”


Shop Talk |

Book-Length Sentences: The Antidote to Twitter? (And does Twitter need an antidote, anyway?)

by Celeste Ng

That basic unit of literature, the sentence, has been getting a lot of attention lately thanks to Stanley Fish’s new book How to Write a Sentence. In it, Fish makes an argument that sentences are to writing what paint is to painting: But wouldn’t the equivalent of paint be words rather than sentences? Actually, no, because while you can brush or even drip paint on a canvas and make something interesting happen, just piling up words, one after the other, won’t do much of anything until something else has been added. […] Before the words slide into their slots, they […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Adults, by Alison Espach

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Lori Ostlund’s The Bigness of the World, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Susan Kleinman, David Northington, and Dan Cafaro. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this novel. This week we’re featuring Alison Espach’s debut novel The Adults. Espach received her MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis and now lives in New York City. Her short fiction has appeared in such places as McSweeney’s, Five Chapters, Del Sol Review, […]


Shop Talk |

Kids + Books = ?

by Celeste Ng

What happens when you give a kid a book as a present? Sometimes, outrage, as in this video that lit up the liternets in December (via): But I prefer this video, aptly titled “Adorable French Girl Breathlessly Recounts Winnie The Pooh Plot.” (Or his adventures as she recalls them, anyway…) Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo. It’s a stunningly cute example of the magic and wonder a book can create for a child. Don’t you remember getting so gloriously entangled in the world of a book that you sort of forgot where reality stopped and imagination began? (Via.) […]


Essays |

The Good Review

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Earlier this month, Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin moderated a panel on criticism at the 2011 AWP Conference entitled “The Good Review: Criticism in the Age of Book Blogs and Amazon.com.” Joining him were Charles Baxter, Stacey D’Erasmo, Gemma Sieff, and Keith Taylor. In this essay, adapted from his talk at that panel, he discusses why liking a book should have nothing to do with a review, and how this thoughts on criticism have changed since running an independent bookstore.


Shop Talk |

The Benefits of the Virtual Book Tour

by Celeste Ng

The DIY book tour has become more and more popular (or should we say, necessary?) as publishers cut funding for traditional book tours and as self-publishing becomes more feasible for emerging writers. For the author arranging his or her own publicity, the most obvious route is old-fashioned in-person bookstore visits, which we’ve discussed quite a bit here at FWR over the past year—a sign that writers increasingly need to act as their own marketers, perhaps. But while the internet era makes life harder for writers in some ways—the increased challenges it causes for traditional publishing, for one—it also gives the […]


Interviews |

Burst of Inspiration: A Flash Interview with Meg Pokrass

by Lee Thomas

In Meg Pokrass’ debut collection of flash fiction, Damn Sure Right, each story gives the reader just enough to imagine a universe. Lee Thomas and Pokrass discuss first publication, the harmony between poetry and short short stories, and the soundtrack to the author’s creative process.


Shop Talk |

After 18 Years, Train of Thought Comes to a Halt

by Celeste Ng

Whenever I’m in NYC, I love riding the subway. It’s cheap. It gets you (almost) anywhere you need to go. You get to see a wide spectrum of people: the crazies, the businesspeople, and everyone in between. And, possibly best of all, the subway cars had literary quotes. You’d sit there, waiting for your stop (because of course you ended up on the local), looking up idly at ads for banks and special gym deals, and suddenly you’d see a quote by T. S. Eliot or Franz Kafka. The MTA’s “Train of Thought” program was an extension of an earlier […]


Shop Talk |

Control your own book tour destiny

by Lee Thomas

We’ve written several posts over the years about the emergence of DIY book tours, marketing and self-publicity (read them here, and here, and here). Not only do self-published authors need to get their hustle on, but writers who publish with small presses, or find themselves mid-level (or lower) on a big house’s list can find their book off the radar within months of a debut. Yet many writers find they’re woefully unprepared to find the right venue in Kansas City or drum up buzz ahead of time so they don’t show up to an empty house at an Austin coffee […]




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