Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

Shop Talk |

Don't just Bitch, join the conversation

by Charlotte Boulay

Recently Bitch Magazine published a list, “100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader,” and it includes a lot of great titles I was happy to be reminded of, including classics like A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and The Golden Compass, as well as novels by Ursula LeGuin, Judy Blume, Cynthia Voigt, and other very contemporary selections like The Hunger Games and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies. I was surprised by the number of books on the list I hadn’t read, including three titles (Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, and Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth […]


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So you're NOT in DC right now…

by Celeste Ng

Maybe the holidays left you broke. Maybe you couldn’t take vacation days off work. Or maybe you got stranded by the SnOMG! XVIII that snarled flights from the Midwest to the east coast. Whatever the reason, you’re not at AWP this weekend. What to do instead? Well, if you’re in Brooklyn, there’s always the first annual Fake AWP. Slice Magazine has the scoop: To provide a haven for those either too broke, too busy, or too disillusioned (with the fact that really it ought to be AWWP, jeez) to attend the massive four-day conference in Washington, D.C., an assortment of […]


Reviews |

How to Hold a Woman, by Billy Lombardo

When The Unthinkable happens, how does a person – let alone a writer – deal with it? Billy Lombardo answers that sticky question with How to Hold a Woman, a novel-in-stories about a family dealing with the loss of their eldest child, Isabel. In this review, Alison Espach explores how “the stories become not solely about the pain the family experiences, but more about when and how they feel happiness in light of the tragedy.”


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Thursday morning candy: The Drum

by Celeste Ng

Those who take public transportation get to read during their commutes every day. But what about those who have to drive? Here’s one solution: The Drum, an online audio literary magazine, which bills itself as “a literary magazine for your ears.” Issues feature short stories, essays, and novel excerpts, all available to stream or to download to the device of your choice. Most content is free access; individual pieces are available for purchase after they’ve been on the site for three months. Recently, The Drum also formed a partnership with audio publisher Iambik: Being in the business of audio literature, […]


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FWR at AWP

by Lee Thomas

It’s here – AWP 2011! If you’ll be in D.C. for the conference, please come see Fiction Writers Review at Table B-18 in the bookfair. Quick reminder: our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two book signings at our table, and a number of our contributors are featured speakers this year. Here again, are some highlights: Friday, February 4 9 am:“The Good Review: Criticism in the Age of Book Blogs and Amazon.com” Panelists: Jeremiah Chamberlin, moderator; Charles Baxter; Stacey D’Erasmo; Gemma Sieff; Keith Taylor. This panel examines how criticism is changing in a literary […]


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Best. Literary Cameos. Ever.

by Celeste Ng

GalleyCat reports the mashup of two of my favorite things: literature and The Simpsons. Sometime in the upcoming season, novelist Neil Gaiman will be an animated guest star on the long-running TV show. In a blog post, Gaiman notes: I play myself. I play a very different version of myself to the me I played in Arthur, though. For a start, I do not appear in anyone’s falafel. Also, I expect I will be yellow. The Simpsons has a long history of literary references, from a rendition of Poe’s “The Raven” to a spoof of Lord of the Flies in […]


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Book of The Week: Quiet Americans, by Erika Dreifus

by Lee Thomas

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 Jacob Paul’s Sarah/Sara, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Eileen Pollack, Emma Kate Tsai, and Ana Maria Velasco. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Erika Dreifus’s story collection Quiet Americans. Erika, a Contributing Editor at Fiction Writers Review, wrote a lovely review of last week’s Book of The Week, Sarah/Sara for the site last year, which you can find here. Her other reviews for FWR […]


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Bookworm Dating Hits the New York Times

by Celeste Ng

Last summer, FWR reported on Alikewise, a free dating site based on your taste in books. Only five months later, the New York Times has picked up the story, including Alikewise in a roundup of “niche dating sites.” Compared to some of the other sites, in the list—matchmaking sites for senior citizens, Apple lovers, virgins seeking other virgins, and mustache fetishists—finding a date based on shared literary tastes is hardly weird. Is this a sign, maybe, that literary dating is ready for the mainstream?


Reviews |

The Bigness of the World, by Lori Ostlund

J.T. Bushnell considers how Lori Ostlund’s debut story collection, The Bigness of the World, filled as it is with “godless homosexuals scattered across the globe” would have likely pleased Flannery O’Connor, whose own work is “unapologetically regional and almost dogmatically Catholic.” Ostlund, who won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction last year, writes of the mystery beneath our outer trappings, an underlying truth that binds the two writers in common cause.


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Flipbook: "Research"

by Lee Thomas

Two weeks ago we launched a new feature, the 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. Our second Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive slide right here on the blog. Every few weeks we’ll post a Flipbook that highlights some of […]




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