Suspend Your Disbelief

Author Archive

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A Barbaric yAWP

by Lee Thomas

While nearly every writer knows the uplift that community interaction provides – not only to the words on the page, but to a career, to a new collaboration, to every aspect of the literary life – not everyone has the ability or means to travel to the AWP Conference. So what’s a community-craving writer to do? Enter Meg’s Barbaric yAWP. Founder Meg Pokrass, writer – newly minted author! – and member of the FWR community – began “A Barbaric yAWP” as an alternative, virtual way for writers and people in the biz to connect during the 3-day period of AWP. […]


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Save Harper's Magazine

by Natalie Bakopoulos

For the last several months, Harper’s staff, recently unionized, has been in conflict with the magazine’s publisher, John R. “Rick” MacArthur. The disagreements stem from various sources, which have been outlined in two recent articles in New York Magazine, here and here. In short: MacArthur is resistant to other avenues of revenue, including fund raising. Instead, having already cut the size and payroll of the editorial staff, which lost four senior editors and its web editor in 2010, MacArthur is now insisting that it’s necessary to lay off, immediately, two of the magazine’s most experienced editors, one of whom is […]


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Thursday morning candy: Tin House

by Lee Thomas

The founders of Tin House – magazine, book publisher, workshop destination – put their mission best, so I won’t try to improve upon it: The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. Publisher Win McCormack said of the effort, “I wanted to create a literary magazine for the many passionate readers who are not necessarily literary academics or publishing professionals.” From their latest issue (pictured above), which fills me with a tinge of nostalgia (did anyone else think of Jan Brett’s wonderfully […]


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Book of the Week: Sarah/Sara, by Jacob Paul

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 Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Sarah Comer, Maggie Bertucci Hamper, and Kendra Langford Shaw. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Jacob Paul’s Sarah/Sara. The author, who is an Associate Professor at Utah State, where he recently received his PhD, was formerly in the finance industry. On the morning of September 11th of 2001, he was in Tower […]


Interviews |

The Text You Can’t Control: An Interview with Jacob Paul

“We create things that we hope will, someday, become objects of value. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many writers–Foer, DeLillo, and Roth, to name just a few–all came out with 9/11 novels. I was initially bothered by this. I wanted to say, ‘Fuck you; I was there.’ This passed for a couple reasons. First was the realization that we’re all survivors of one type or another. Second, these texts can never really become authoritative positions on the experiences of a group of people, no matter how well written they are or how well credentialed their creators might be. There’s no uniform experience of being a 9/11 survivor, no uniform experience of being a woman. These are things that can’t be owned by anyone.”


Shop Talk |

Come see us at AWP!

by Lee Thomas

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since last spring’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference, which took place in Denver. But the 2011 AWP conference is already around the corner! This year’s four-day event will be held in Washington D.C. from Wednesday, February 2 – Saturday, February 5. And, as always, Fiction Writers Review will be there. This year we’re at Table B-18 in the bookfair. So please come see us. We’ll also be busy with plenty of events. Our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two […]


Shop Talk |

Recently on FWR…

by Anne Stameshkin

Hello, blog readers! In case you’ve missed any of FWR’s features so far in 2011, here’s a quick recap, complete with tasty excerpts: – In her interview with novelist Tracy Chevalier (Remarkable Creatures, Girl with a Pearl Earring), Felicity Librie uncovers how research fuels the process of character development, how the past sheds light on our present moment, and why Chevalier will never tire of getting lost on a journey of discovery. TRACY CHAVALIER: I put the story first, and the characters. The history always has to be secondary. I don’t want to be a teacher, I want to be […]


Shop Talk |

You want a place where everybody knows … your reading list

by Lee Thomas

In a bit of Whisper-Down-The-Lane, this came to me from FWR’s own Michael Rudin, who got it from Matt Bell, who mentions Aaron Burch in his original post. Whew! But this trailer for Portlandia (a new show debuting on IFC tonight, which apparently is now up on Hulu – thanks again Matt) is too hilarious not to share with the seven people who have yet to experience that pang of recognition, only to succumb to the hilarity of it all. May your weekend hold all the I’ve-read-everything-you-have conversations your heart desires. I secretly cherish the old “Lord Jim?” “Yes, I […]


Reviews |

The Countess, by Rebecca Johns

by Laura Valeri

Erzsebet Bathory gained immortal fame as one of the first female serial killers; known as the “Bloody Countess,” she was accused of brutally torturing and murdering over six-hundred young women. But was she really an unrepentant, psychopathic murderer—or simply a political obstacle to the king? Was she really bathing in the blood of her victims, or was she herself the victim of a witch hunt? Such questions haunt the pages of The Countess (Crown, 2010), Rebecca Johns’s lively historical novel, which reconstructs the complexity of this 17th century scandal and brings alive the woman behind the myth.


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Ploughshares

by Lee Thomas

In a landscape crowded with brand-new literary mags – which are always exciting to FWR – we want to give a shout out to an old stalwart: Ploughshares. Started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, Ploughshares has called Emerson College home for the past two decades. Several Fiction Writers Review contributors have had work appear in the magazine, including Valerie Laken and brand new Contributing Editor Travis Holland. One of my favorite aspects of Ploughshares is that every issue is edited by a different guest editor, who shapes the theme and selects pieces with his or her own particular aesthetic. Past […]




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