Suspend Your Disbelief

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Lee Thomas

Editor at Large

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.


Articles

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Control your own book tour destiny

by Lee Thomas

We’ve written several posts over the years about the emergence of DIY book tours, marketing and self-publicity (read them here, and here, and here). Not only do self-published authors need to get their hustle on, but writers who publish with small presses, or find themselves mid-level (or lower) on a big house’s list can find their book off the radar within months of a debut. Yet many writers find they’re woefully unprepared to find the right venue in Kansas City or drum up buzz ahead of time so they don’t show up to an empty house at an Austin coffee […]


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Thursday morning candy: Vectors

by Lee Thomas

In homage to the conversation about teaching creative writing in 21st century that we published last week, I’d like to highlight something a little different to jolt your creativity this Thursday morning. Vectors: A Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular. I first heard of it via Anna Leahy’s shout out in Part 2 of the aforementioned essay, “Where Are We Going Next?” The USC-based journal may not be a lit magazine in the traditional sense, but spending some time on the site has certainly gotten my mind racing with ideas, connections, energy – all vital to the […]


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HuffPo, $315 mil, and when to write for free

by Lee Thomas

At 9 a.m. on the Saturday of AWP, I rallied for “When Should We Write for Free?” – a panel that, just like it sounds, featured writers discussing their own guidelines to answer that question. The panel gave insight into a marketplace that has rapidly grown accustomed to free content. There was much discussion during the audience Q&A about providing free content – mostly in the form of blogging – and folks mentioned the Huffington Post several times, since their bloggers are not paid. Fast forward to last week, when the Huffington Post announced that AOL would acquire it for […]


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Best American Short Fiction from Storyville

by Lee Thomas

Many of you blog readers may recall Michael’s great post about the launch of Storyville – the mobile short story magazine that sends a short story to your iPhone or iPad every week for $4.99 / 6 month subscription. Quite a steal. Starting today, and for the next two Tuesdays, Storyville will feature one story from each of the three collections that are Finalists for The Story Prize, the largest cash prize – $20,000 – for best story collection published the previous year. The stories will be drawn from the three finalist collections: Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr (Scribners), Death […]


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Flipbook: "Inspiration"

by Lee Thomas

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 […]


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FWR at AWP

by Lee Thomas

It’s here – AWP 2011! If you’ll be in D.C. for the conference, please come see Fiction Writers Review at Table B-18 in the bookfair. Quick reminder: our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two book signings at our table, and a number of our contributors are featured speakers this year. Here again, are some highlights: Friday, February 4 9 am:“The Good Review: Criticism in the Age of Book Blogs and Amazon.com” Panelists: Jeremiah Chamberlin, moderator; Charles Baxter; Stacey D’Erasmo; Gemma Sieff; Keith Taylor. This panel examines how criticism is changing in a literary […]


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Book of The Week: Quiet Americans, by Erika Dreifus

by Lee Thomas

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Jacob Paul’s Sarah/Sara, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Eileen Pollack, Emma Kate Tsai, and Ana Maria Velasco. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Erika Dreifus’s story collection Quiet Americans. Erika, a Contributing Editor at Fiction Writers Review, wrote a lovely review of last week’s Book of The Week, Sarah/Sara for the site last year, which you can find here. Her other reviews for FWR […]


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Flipbook: "Research"

by Lee Thomas

Two weeks ago we launched a new feature, the 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. Our second Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive slide right here on the blog. Every few weeks we’ll post a Flipbook that highlights some of […]


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A Barbaric yAWP

by Lee Thomas

While nearly every writer knows the uplift that community interaction provides – not only to the words on the page, but to a career, to a new collaboration, to every aspect of the literary life – not everyone has the ability or means to travel to the AWP Conference. So what’s a community-craving writer to do? Enter Meg’s Barbaric yAWP. Founder Meg Pokrass, writer – newly minted author! – and member of the FWR community – began “A Barbaric yAWP” as an alternative, virtual way for writers and people in the biz to connect during the 3-day period of AWP. […]


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Thursday morning candy: Tin House

by Lee Thomas

The founders of Tin House – magazine, book publisher, workshop destination – put their mission best, so I won’t try to improve upon it: The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. Publisher Win McCormack said of the effort, “I wanted to create a literary magazine for the many passionate readers who are not necessarily literary academics or publishing professionals.” From their latest issue (pictured above), which fills me with a tinge of nostalgia (did anyone else think of Jan Brett’s wonderfully […]




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