Suspend Your Disbelief

Michael Rudin

Development Director

Michael Rudin is an author and the founder of the creative agency Armed Mind. His short fiction, novel-length fiction, and digital storytelling has earned numerous awards, including recognition from The Webby Awards, Creativity Awards, and a Hopwood Award. Say hello via Twitter @mikerudin or www.mikerudin.com.


Articles

Reviews |

The Forbidden Thought: A review of Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

From the Archives: We celebrate Valentine’s Day with an homage to the living dead: Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. Don’t fancy a date with scary slavering? No matter. Michael Rudin finds the novel reads like an existential valentine to New York City, and that’s something even a zombie can love.


Reviews |

Journal of the Week: A Public Space

Our latest Journal of the Week, A Public Space, strives to be “a literary forum for the stories behind the news, a fragment of an overheard conversation, a peek at the novel the person next to you on the subway is reading, the life you invent for the man in front of you at the supermarket checkout line. Ideas and stories about the things that confront us, amuse us, confound us, intrigue us.”


Shop Talk |

Get Writing: Steal on the First Pitch

In our “Get Writing” series, we share some of our favorite exercises for classroom (or personal) use. Enjoy! You’ve played your most inspirational music. You’ve flipped through your most weathered paperback. You’ve stood on your head, gone on a jog and even cleaned your apartment. Twice. But if that first sentence just isn’t coming to you, don’t force it. Borrow someone else’s. The secret to this writing prompt is not having access to that second sentence. With two, you’re just a reader enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labor. You’re going down their path. But armed with just one sentence, […]


Shop Talk |

Journal of the Week subscription winners: PANK

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our PANK Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Samantha (@schpallir) Art Allen (@punsultant) Jenny Howard (@jennifhow) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to PANK! Please email us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information, and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of PANK and the exclusive interview with co-editor Roxane Gay, 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 Twitter Page and “follow” […]


Shop Talk |

Journal of the Week: American Short Fiction

In the end, I don’t have many literary magazines because I give most away. Leaving them at coffee shops and airports, with friends and family, I pay my journals forward, margin notes and all. But I kept American Short Fiction Volume 13, Issue 47. My experience with #47 began with its second-to-last-story—a sin the editors must forgive me, for I had not yet learned of the careful strategy with which they assemble every issue’s order. I started there because the story, “Walker, Wallace, Warren” had been written by Matt Bell, and his was the first name I recognized in the […]