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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Come see us at AWP!

by Lee Thomas

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since last spring’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference, which took place in Denver. But the 2011 AWP conference is already around the corner! This year’s four-day event will be held in Washington D.C. from Wednesday, February 2 – Saturday, February 5. And, as always, Fiction Writers Review will be there. This year we’re at Table B-18 in the bookfair. So please come see us. We’ll also be busy with plenty of events. Our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two […]


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You want a place where everybody knows … your reading list

by Lee Thomas

In a bit of Whisper-Down-The-Lane, this came to me from FWR’s own Michael Rudin, who got it from Matt Bell, who mentions Aaron Burch in his original post. Whew! But this trailer for Portlandia (a new show debuting on IFC tonight, which apparently is now up on Hulu – thanks again Matt) is too hilarious not to share with the seven people who have yet to experience that pang of recognition, only to succumb to the hilarity of it all. May your weekend hold all the I’ve-read-everything-you-have conversations your heart desires. I secretly cherish the old “Lord Jim?” “Yes, I […]


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Thursday morning candy: Ploughshares

by Lee Thomas

In a landscape crowded with brand-new literary mags – which are always exciting to FWR – we want to give a shout out to an old stalwart: Ploughshares. Started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, Ploughshares has called Emerson College home for the past two decades. Several Fiction Writers Review contributors have had work appear in the magazine, including Valerie Laken and brand new Contributing Editor Travis Holland. One of my favorite aspects of Ploughshares is that every issue is edited by a different guest editor, who shapes the theme and selects pieces with his or her own particular aesthetic. Past […]


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Haiti: Remembering Her Stories

by Lee Thomas

Jaunary 12, 2011 marked the 1-year anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti. The news this past week has been filled with scenes of the temporary camps set up to house the one million Haitians left homeless by the quake – largely unchanged a year later. Just yesterday, police arrested Jean-Claude Duvalier – the controversial Haitian politician who fled Haiti in 1986 – from a Port-Au-Prince hotel. Duvalier has lived in self-imposed exile for nearly a quarter century, after a popular uprising overthrew his regime. Haitian Literature Is a Living Art: Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour and Thomas […]


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Introducing: Flipbooks

by Lee Thomas

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to inspire, encourage, and challenge our fellow readers and writers. During the past two and a half years, we’ve featured more than 50 interviews with authors established and emerging. And 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 writing community. So we’re pleased to announce the Fiction Writers Review “Flipbook.” Flipbooks debut today on the FWR Facebook page. Every few weeks we’ll post a […]


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Let's get digital

by Lee Thomas

This post stems from a conversation with my brother – who recently moved to Chile – about what he’d loaded onto his Kindle. As a recent college grad, with limited disposable income, he was pretty stringent in choosing the books he bought. But he’s a voracious reader. His solution: he loaded up his e-reader with a clutch of classics that have entered the public domain. Let them read (old) books! Though beautiful books draw my eye, the trump card for me will always be the words on the page. I love books for the story, which means I keep reading […]


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Thursday morning candy: Wigleaf

by Lee Thomas

There’s something to be said for simplicity. An afternoon spent at the park. Only what you can fit in your pocket. A bowl of fresh apricots straight from the tree (sorry, New York has me dreaming of summer already). Every time I visit Wigleaf, their clean design aesthetic, wide margins and punchy, brief stories of under 1,000 words feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day (even when I am looking at several inches of snow outside the window). Wigleaf started in 2008, and we have Scott Garson to thank for the design and main editing on […]


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A Room of Her Own

by Lee Thomas

Attention all ladies: A Room of Her Own (AROHO) has a trio of great awards coming up in January and beyond. The foundation for women writers & artists, whose mission encompasses empowering, educating, and encouraging women writers and artists, features their spring Orlando Prize, with submissions closing on January 31. AROHO writes: AROHO’s Orlando Prizes for unpublished poetry, short fiction, flash fiction and nonfiction celebrate Virginia Woolf’s title character’s liberation from the restraints of time and gender. AROHO’s new array of competitions is an invitation of women writers to manifest their own escapades “in gardens running down to the river, […]


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Inspiration 2.011

by Lee Thomas

One of my favorite elements of FWR’s author interviews has got to be reading about what inspires other writers. Some of us get lost in years of research, some just get out into the world and make friends on the bus, some can’t say enough about delving into nonfiction, science journals, trips to the ballet – you name it. Writing is a passion that feeds off other passions. You can definitely feel this as a reader. Sometimes, sitting in front of blank document, I long for the days of the high school essay prompt. My English teacher senior year, Ms. […]


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The next generation

by Lee Thomas

The San Francisco WritersCorps program places professional writers in community settings to teach creative writing to youth. Like the 826 programs around the U.S., Red Beard Press in Ann Arbor, or Voices Behind Walls in El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM, WritersCorps works with young people to hone their writing skills – poetry, fiction, memoir, song writing – as a means of creative power and self-expression. This year, WritersCorps won a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award for their work with young people. From their website: WritersCorps, a project of the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San […]




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