Suspend Your Disbelief

Contributor Types

Anne Stameshkin

Founding Editor

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.


Articles

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20 years ago, McEwan offered Rushdie safe haven

by Anne Stameshkin

Two decades after the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie, it’s been revealed that Ian McEwan offered the author a place to hide — a cottage in the Cotswolds — and joined him there for some time. From the Guardian: This intimate detail is contained in a long profile of McEwan published in next week’s issue of the New Yorker. Written by an editor at the magazine, Daniel Zalewski, it explores McEwan’s growing commitment to science and rationality as a factor, alongside the Rushdie affair, behind the controversy over Islamic fundamentalism in which he later became embroiled. The Cotswold encounter […]


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February/March preview and call for submissions

by Anne Stameshkin

write for us… Fiction Writers Review is seeking to grow our community of contributors. If you’re interested in writing a review, essay, or interview for us, check out our updated submissions guidelines. coming soon… Over the next few weeks, we’ll publish reviews of the following books (and more): Novels The Mayor’s Tongue by Nathaniel Rich, Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, Beijing Coma by Ma Jiang, and The Women by T.S. Boyle Story collections In the Convent of Little Flowers by Indu Sundaresan and Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff Biography Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis We’ll also offer some […]


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"what they need is a damn good reading"

by Anne Stameshkin

“Books were once subversive things, causing revolutions, and stimulating unimagined sexual awakenings…These days, opening a book – any book – is seen as nothing more than part of good citizenship, and something that might just help you on the path to prosperity to boot.” Alastair Harper gets satirical on the Guardian Books Blog, raising questions about indiscriminate reading and experiments like OUP’s Project X: There is a presumption that if the worst, most delinquent tearaways would just put down their machetes for a moment and sit down to read a good book, they would instantly see the merit in a […]


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Fiction Writers Review at AWP!

by Anne Stameshkin

If you’ll be at AWP in Chicago this Thursday-Saturday, do stop by the University of Michigan table, where FWR will be representing with giveaway magnets and bookmarks; we’re hoping to spread the word about our site, grow our community of writers and readers, connect with publishers, and learn about new and forthcoming books. Sadly I won’t be at AWP myself (this wretched pneumonia forced me to cancel my flight today), but a number of FWR contributors will be in attendance, among them Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin, who has generously offered to coordinate FWR efforts at the conference. If you’re longing […]


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recommended review: Erika Dreifus on How to Write Like Chekhov

by Anne Stameshkin

Apologies for these very short blog entries, FWR readers. I have a bad bout of pneumonia and my drugged brain is not operating on all cylinders. So please, go yonder and read this wonderful review on The Practicing Writer of How to Write Like Chekhov: Advice and Inspiration, Straight from His Own Letters and Work (edited by Piero Brunello and Lena Lencek, translated from the Russian and Italian by Lena Lencek; published Nov. 2008 by Da Capo Press).


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Kindle 2.0

by Anne Stameshkin

Amazon’s brand new Kindle 2 is here, and Brad Stone says it’s “lighter, brighter, and chattier.” I admit it…I want one, and at the same time, I feel guilty for wanting one. It’s hard not to be sucked in by hyperbolic exclamations that this e-book reader is either the savior of publishing or the harbinger of its death. What do you think — is it harmful, helpful, or totally innocuous/inconsequential to purchase one? If you have a Kindle 1.0, how do you like it, and are you considering an upgrade? Here’s Stephen King at today’s launch; King scored a free […]




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