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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Journal of the Week subscription winners: BOMB

by Celeste Ng

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our BOMB Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Sonia Rumzi (@SRumzi) Fic Addict (@fic_addict) Alice Tasman (@AliceTasman) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to BOMB! Please contact us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of BOMB and the exclusive interview with General Manager, Digital Strategy Paul Morris, you can read the whole thing in our blog archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal giveaways, please visit our […]


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"The loose change in the treasury of fiction"

by Celeste Ng

Why do we need a Short Story Month? The things we designate particular months or days to celebrate are the things we tend to overlook: mothers, ve terans, black history, flags. And indeed, the short story is often overlooked or dismissed in favor of its bigger, flashier, more prominent cousin, the novel. Think about it: how many short story collections can you name? Unless you’re a fiction writer—and maybe even if you are—the answer is probably in the single digits. How many novels can you name? You see my point. So why is the short story given such short shrift? […]


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Get Writing: Cross-Out

by Celeste Ng

Sometimes, when you’re faced with a blank page, the thought of filling that page with even one word of your own is Just. Too. Daunting. Here’s an exercise for those days. You won’t need to write a single word—you’ll be taking words away. Find a paragraph of someone else’s writing. It can be a passage from a story or essay, a section of a news article, whatever. Cross off or delete words and create a mini-story (or story fragment) of 60 words or less from the remaining words. For an extra challenge, keep the original paragraph’s word order. Here is […]


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You're invited: FWR's Stort Story Month Celebration!

by Celeste Ng

The editors and contributors of Fiction Writers Review cordially invite you to celebrate Short Story Month with them. Details below! Who: Short story lovers everywhere When: The entire month of May—coverage starts Sunday, May 1. As part of the celebration, we’ll have special weekend posts, too! Where: All across the site, from reviews to interviews to the blog What: Here’s just a preview of the content we’ll be featuring: Reviews of fantastic story collections Interviews with master short story writers like Mary Gaitskill and Robert Boswell “Stories We Love” blog posts – writers on the stories that inspire them—and why […]


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Things to do with your books (besides read them)

by Celeste Ng

1. Make a vase. Craft blog Green Upgrader presents this video tutorial by crafter Jennifer Berry on turning a book into a (decorative) vase: 2. Make a carpet. Design blog Apartment Therapy highlights this rug made by artist Pamela Paulsrud from the spines of actual books: 3. Make a… restaurant. That’s right. The Brushstroke restaurant in NYC features one wall made entirely of books. The Gothamist has photos. I love books, and I love clever repurposing, but sometimes the sight of so many ex-books gives me the same queasy feeling I get when I look at taxidermy projects. How do […]


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Thursday Morning Candy: Bookseller Chick

by Celeste Ng

After a long hiatus, the blog Bookseller Chick is back, providing thoughts on bookstores, publishing, and all things literary. Writes Linsey, the “Bookseller Chick” herself: A lot has been happening in the book world lately—the flood of great Young Adult books, the rise of the self-publishing success, the increased sales of ebooks, Borders’ bankruptcy, HarperCollins’ new electronic policy for libraries, and Apple’s new reading app requirements—and these things are really starting to make fundamental changes in publishing. Regardless of whether Old School wants it to or not, publish or perish has taken on a whole new meaning. These shifts from […]


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Fiction, like fishes, turns up in strange dishes.

by Celeste Ng

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve seen a bunch of stories lately about fiction appearing in unusual places. And I like it. First, the Standard Hotel in New York City plans to provide every guest room with an American classic during during the PEN World Voices Festival (April 25 to May 1). Author Salman Rushdie will be selecting the titles. Wouldn’t it be great if all hotel rooms came with books to read, right next to the coffee maker and mini-fridge? Next, the Telegraph reports that excerpts from Roald Dahl stories will appear on cereal boxes in the UK. The […]


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How to sign an e-reader

by Celeste Ng

Aside from copyright and industry-related questions (will they make pirating too easy? Will they kill/save publishing?) e-readers have sparked one other conundrum. If you meet the author, what do you ask them to sign? Some readers have asked the authors to autograph the e-reader itself—David Sedaris, for instance, inscribed “This bespells doom” on one. Those who’d like more than one author’s signature, however, now have a new option. Florida resident T. J. Waters has developed a program, Autography, that allows authors to sign an ebook: “Basically, what you do is pull up a copy of your book as the author, […]


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University of Michigan to offer post-MFA fellowships

by Celeste Ng

The University of Michigan has just announced that it will provide one year of post-MFA funding to all of its MFA graduates, starting with the cohort entering its second year this fall. Says a press release: Thanks to a new gift from Helen Zell, the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan is now able to offer all qualifying graduates of our program one year of post-MFA funding. The University of Michigan’s MFA Program in Creative Writing has been committed to offering post-graduate support to our writers since the first Meijer Fellowship was offered in 1999, thanks […]


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Flipbook: "Culture"

by Celeste Ng

Every few weeks, we launch a new 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. Each Flipbook highlights some of the very best of the conversations on our site, centered around a particular topic. Our latest Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive slide right here on […]




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