Girl Fear: An Interview with Mary Stewart Atwell
by Lee Thomas
The debut author on the inherent tensions of Appalachia, choice and chance, and how opportunistic, narcissistic, desperately flawed teenagers provide the fertile ground for Wild Girls.
Lee Thomas is a fiction writer. She was the Managing Editor of FWR from 2010-2013. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Charlotte Observer, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is finishing a story collection.
The debut author on the inherent tensions of Appalachia, choice and chance, and how opportunistic, narcissistic, desperately flawed teenagers provide the fertile ground for Wild Girls.
This summer some dear family friends gave us a few antique German children’s books for our son. They included a huge and heavy tome of Wilhelm Busch’s work for children – author of the savagely funny and come-uppance-heavy Max and Mortiz (look it up, it’s worth it) – and a curious little volume of (what do I call them?) morality tales for children called Der Struwwelpeter, which roughly translates from the German as “Shaggy Peter.” I’d seen a copy on my husband’s grandmother’s shelf, and even the cover illustration–fingernails like tentacles and ominous scissors–creeped me out a bit. Heinrich Hoffman […]
By October 1 all those start-of-the-school-year jitters have worn off (especially if, like me, you’ve no current connection to an academic calendar). In honor of the younger generation of readers, for the month of October FWR will highlight YA lit. Books for young people differ slightly from children’s literature, bridging the gap where Squirrel Nutkin leaves off and The Brothers Karamazov picks up. But, as every serious reader knows, good literature knows no age limit. A Wrinkle in Time still feels as magical as when my father read it aloud when I was eight. Along with our regular content, between […]
Not for the faint of heart. Glitter, doom, and a bracing imaginative landscape await in Binder’s debut collection.
via Mashable. There’s a new route to publishing your book: find the audience first. You’ve heard of Kickstarter, yes? Well, take that model, apply it to your unpublished manuscript, add in a dash of philanthropic good-will you’ve got a potentially game-changing new company: Pubslush. Been trying to find an agent, publisher, anyone to take your manuscript seriously? Perhaps it’s time to take it to the people: The process is simple. First, authors submit ten pages and a summary of their book. Then, we let you browse the submissions based on your preferences. You read a brief overview, and if it […]
British author Jon McGregor’s new collection assures you otherwise with plenty of big, bad, foreboding tales.
Most stories we read, hear, even tell — we forget. A scant few haunt us across years. The best ones never leave. I still remember the first time I read One Story issue #141 on the F train. Early November in New York, when wet, bare branches foreshadow winter. It begins: Freda weighed eighteen pounds when she was born. Her feet were each six inches long. At ten, she was taller than her father. Five feet eleven and one-half inches standing in her socks. I can’t keep you in shoes, her mother would say, and they went to Woolworth’s for […]
Welcome to Fiction Writers Review‘s third annual Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to champion great short story collections. The brainchild of Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, 18 bloggers participated in the CGP 2011, giving away dozens of collections. Instructions on how to participate in The Collection Giveaway Project 2012. Note: Bloggers, please feel free to copy and borrow the CGP banner from this post for use on your own site. CGP 2012 Participants (updated daily!) David Abrams / The Quivering Pen: with Friday Freebies – Fires of Our Choosing, by Eugene Cross, This Will Be Difficult to […]
Short Story Month countdown: 7 days to May! Fiction Writers Review will host the third annual Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to champion great short story collections. The brainchild of Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, 18 bloggers participated in the CGP 2011, giving away dozens of collections. How to participate in The Collection Giveaway Project: (1) Blog about a recently published short story collection (or two, or three). Long or short, review or rave. Only rule: you, the blogger, read and loved the book(s). (2) Offer a copy (or copies) as a giveaway to one lucky commenter. […]
Steven Millhauser! Yes, I know that news broke last week. But Anne and I attended the event on behalf of FWR – quite the literary crowd, Hannah Tinti further down our row, spotted Paul Vidich in the aisle. Here are some highlights: Don Delillo described going back to stories he’d written in the late 1970s and early 80s and not changing anything. Oh, wait, he took out all the semicolons, colons, and commas that magazine editors had introduced. He said it best: “I was a free man.” Cormac McCarthy, eat your heart out. Steven Millhauser, white floss of hair aglow […]
