Suspend Your Disbelief

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Celeste Ng

Editor at Large

Celeste Ng is the author of the novels Everything I Never Told You  (2014) and Little Fires Everywhere (2017). She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Articles

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BookCrossing: Catch & Release

by Celeste Ng

Remember the movie Amelie, when Audrey Tatou’s takes photos of her father’s garden gnome in all kinds of faraway places? BookCrossing is kind of like that, but for books. Users label copies of their favorite books with special codes and leave them in public places, then log in to see who’s found the book and where the book has traveled around the world. Says the site: Release it into the wild. Referred to as the “wild release” (and loved by so many BookCrossers), this type of sharing is a bit like nudging a baby bird out of the nest or […]


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THIS WEEKEND: clmp's Lit Mag Marathon Weekend (NYC)

by Celeste Ng

This weekend, CLMP (The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses) is hosting its 12th annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend. Here’s the scoop, courtesy of CLMP’s newsletter: The Magathon: Saturday, June 11th, 4-6:30 PM New York Public Library’s DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, 5th Ave. at 42nd St. In this “marathon” reading, editors of lit journals will present selections from their first issues. The GIANT Lit Mag Fair at Housing Works: Sunday, June 12th, 11-4PM Housing Works Used Book Café, 126 Crosby Street in Soho Lucky you, New Yorkers—you can pick up tons of lit mags for only $2 a copy! Magazines […]


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Longlist for Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award announced

by Celeste Ng

The longlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award has just come out, and here at FWR, we’re thrilled to have featured many of the writers on it in interviews, reviews, and essays, including: Anthony Doerr, for Memory Wall Danielle Evans, for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self Siobhan Fallon, for You Know When the Men Are Gone Alan Heathcock, for Volt Valerie Laken, for Separate Kingdoms Yiyun Li, for Golden Boy, Emerald Girl Offered by the Munster Literature Centre, the 35,000-euro prize is the largest for a short story collection.  The shortlist will be announced in July.  […]


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Lit doing good

by Celeste Ng

It might be made up, but fiction can still do a lot of very practical good in the world Here are three recent examples: 1. Tornado relief: In the wake of the tornadoes that devastated Alabama in April, author Shiloh Walker pledged to make a donation of $1 to United Way for every comment left on her blog post. (Via.) 2. Japan earthquake relief: In collaboration with Japanese editor Motoyuki Shibata, A Public Space has launched Monkey Business: New Voices from Japan, an annual English-language version of Shibata’s Japanese journal Monkey Business. To aid relief efforts for the recent earthquake […]


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Journal of the Week subscription winners: American Short Fiction

by Celeste Ng

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our American Short Fiction Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Stella MacLean (@Stella__MacLean) J.P. Cunningham (@jpcauthor) Rosemary O’Connor (@RosNovelIdeas) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to American Short Fiction! Please contact us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of American Short Fiction and the exclusive interview with Assoiate Editor Callie Collins, you can read the whole thing in our blog archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal […]


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Plotting out "Plot"

by Celeste Ng

How can graphs and charts help you with your writing? Blogger Derek Sivers shares these story grids from Kurt Vonnegut to help you visualize the plot of your story. (via.) Here’s one of the story of Cinderella: And if nothing else, a graph might put things in perspective. Witness blogger Ed Yong’s graph of what the writing process feels like (via). He’s a science writer, but this could apply just as well to fiction writing: My favorite point, and one I’ve been at all too often: “Regurgitated a plate of idea spaghetti. I’ll never extract a single strand from this. […]


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Furry little muses

by Celeste Ng

Bubba Zo. Pumpkin. Wanita. Marlowe. New York Social Diary has a great series of photos of writers and their dogs (including the above pooches of Amy Tan, Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Hempel, and Stephen King, respectively). Don’t worry, cat-lovers, we’ve got writers and their cats, too. Here’s Joyce Carol Oates and her kitty:


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Short Stories vs. Novels: The Final Smackdown

by Celeste Ng

Just kidding. I don’t mean versus as in fight to the death / zero-sum / there can be only one winner. I mean versus as in: what’s the difference? How are these two forms alike and where do they diverge, and if we’ve been speaking the language of one for a while, how can we shift our thinking so as to be fluent in the other? Because let’s face it: novels are what sell. Send a bunch of agents short stories, and they’ll ask, “But do you have a novel?” That’s the hard-headed, business side of writing—writing a novel is […]


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This Week in Shorts

by Celeste Ng

For the last weekend of Fiction Writers Review’s Short Story Month celebration, here’s one more helping of short-story-related news (and some gratuitous shorts-related photos&#151you know you enjoy them): READ: Ninth Letter shares a story by Rachel Cantor, “Zanzibar, Bereft,” to read online. At The Millions, Paul Vidich reflects on the livelihood of the short story: “Is today’s short fiction not as good? Hardly. Why aren’t readers holding up their part of the bargain? The answer, let me suggest, is related to how readers are given the opportunity to read – distribution, in commercial terms.” Still not enough short stories for […]


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Knockout Punches: a guest post by Stacie M. Williams

by Celeste Ng

Editor’s note: As part of our ongoing Short Story Month Celebration, we are delighted to present the following guest post by Stacie M. Williams of Boswell Book Company. A fellow bookseller, when inclined to discuss my fiction reading habits, described my taste simply and accurately as “dark and twisty.” This, fortunately or unfortunately, is all too true, and when you are a reader of things that are dark in nature, violent in content, lustfully raw, and stormy in mood, it’s sometimes best to take it in small, brief doses. This post honors that taste, with a nod to new favorite […]




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