Anne Stameshkin lives in Brooklyn. Her fiction has been published in the Chattahoochee Review andNimrod, and her book reviews have appeared inEnfuse magazine. Anne holds an MFA (fiction) from the University of Michigan. She pays the bills as a freelance editor, writer, and writing teacher, most recently at Connecticut College. While in-house at McGraw-Hill, Anne edited a number of literature and composition texts and two craft books—Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola and The Sincerest Form: Writing Fiction by Imitation by Nicholas Delbanco, among other projects. She is currently at work on a novel. Some recently published collections she recommends include If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black, The Theory of Light and Matter by Andrew Porter, and Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle.
I’m really looking forward to reading Dzanc’s newly launched online literary magazine this weekend. To learn more about The Collagist, read the debut issue‘s welcome letter/preview from editor Matt Bell. I’m especially interested in the inclusion of a novel excerpt, acknowledged as such; this issue’s extract comes from Laird Hunt‘s fourth novel Ray of the Star (forthcoming this September from Coffee House Press).
Earlier this year, Celeste and I blogged about how much FWR loves the TED series, in which speakers give a short talk about one topic of their choosing. Another site, big think–which describes itself as “a global forum connecting people and ideas”–also offers hundreds of short video interviews, plenty of which would be interesting to writers or useful for writing teachers. Indulge in some healthy procrastination from your novel, syllabus, or deadline project by checking out a few samples: * Elizabeth Gilbert discusses what it means when we call a book “Chick Lit” and shares some of her ideas about […]
These photos of the DOK Library Concept Center (Holland) by Jenny Levine, “The Shifted Librarian” on flickr, are like porn if you love libraries, modern architecture, and books. The mission of this library is, at least in part, to be a fun, inviting space–one where kids can stand on the furniture and eat while they read, and where books are integrated with music, games, and other media. Reading becomes socially awesome. And yet DOK also values reading’s solitary nature by providing–as an alternative to the wide-open, light-soaked spaces–nooks and secret rooms where readers can lose themselves in a book. Surrounding […]
Slate reports on Infintesummer.org, a reading-group/support group combo for those grieving David Foster Wallace‘s death and those wanting to tackle his masterwork. The challenge: Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat. 1. Plus endnotesa. a. A lot of them. Posts range from in-depth analysis of Wallace’s themes to close readings of favorite passages to humorous accounts of how people react when they see you toting around this giant book. (Really!) If you want […]
This month, Andrew recommends Victoria Patterson’s debut collection of linked stories, Drift, as his big-house pick. Read more about it here; you can read one of the collection’s stories, “The First and Second Time,” on the Freight Stories website. For August, Andrew also introduces a new feature, ABC Rewind, which he describes as “spotlight[ing] story collections that may have been slightly overlooked when they were originally published, as well as story collections that are reissued after falling out of print.” The first ABC Rewind pick is Don’t Make Me Stop Now by Michael Parker, the author of several novels, most […]
Three Percent, a site dedicated mostly to international lit, recently featured two must-read posts — “Predatory Pricing Practices” (which includes a clip from the Colbert Report featuring Douglas Rushkoff) and “Anti-Fixed Book Price Essay” — about the predatory pricing practices that stores like WalMart are using to drive down book prices. In short, they’re employing books as loss leaders to sell other products. See also: the NY Times‘ recent article about big box retailers pushing a HUGE proportion of booksales these days and creating “bestsellers”. Could Target really be the next Oprah’s Book Club? It’s interesting to think that a […]
Dear readers, apologies for the lack of posting this past week; I have been readying to move from Brooklyn to Columbus, Ohio, and I remain neck-deep in logistics and work. As for FWR, exciting features are coming soon. I have a stack of material from our fearless writers — interviews! reviews! essays! book news! — just waiting to be posted, and by August 2 we will return to our regularly scheduled (or even somewhat enhanced) program. Come back then, and come back often.
Via Matthew Hittinger, here is a call for submissions from The Writer’s Center just outside D.C. (in Bethesda, MD). Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The Writer’s Center, metropolitan DC’s community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships. Emerging Writer Fellows will be selected from applicants who have published up to 2 book-length works of prose and up to 3 book-length works of poetry. We welcome submissions from writers of any genre, background, or experience. Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer’s Center as part of […]
And this article, in fact, is 1.5 years old. But here are what Bob Harris (via the NY Times‘s “Paper Cuts” blog) names the “seven deadly words of book reviewing,” worn expressions to avoid if you want that novel you’re reviewing to sound remotely fresh. Briefly, they are: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft (verb), muse (verb), lyrical; read the whole entry for Harris’s compelling case against each. (Oops.) I’ll happily give the rest up…but can I keep lyrical? And don’t miss the readers’ comments; some of my favorites include: The “much-anticipated debut.” By whom? The author’s landlord? “that said” makes […]
Warm congratulations to FWR contributor Natalie Bakopoulos, whose story “Fresco, Byzantine,” was just selected for an O’Henry Prize! The story was published by Tin House in their fall 2008 Political Future Issue and will appear in the O’Henry Prize Stories 2010 anthology next year.
