[Reviewlet] Battleborn, by Claire Vaye Watkins
by Ben Pfeiffer
Love, darkness and the long shadows of myth haunt the American Southwest in Battleborn, a debut collection from Claire Vaye Watkins.
Love, darkness and the long shadows of myth haunt the American Southwest in Battleborn, a debut collection from Claire Vaye Watkins.
I am an unabashed Mad Men fan, and this past season was possibly the best—but I will admit that a few times, I was able to tear my eyes from Don Draper in PJs to look at the book in his hands. You know you’re a word-nerd when you watch TV and realize you’re scoping out what the characters are reading. Leave it to Flavorwire to compile the actual reading lists of Rory Gilmore, Don Draper, Daria (whoa ’90s flashback) and more. Rory reads The Bell Jar. Don reads The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Daria reads Being […]
You read that right. Did you know the Olympics used to offer medals in the arts—including creative writing? Mental Floss has the story: The rules for the five [arts] events, which were far less restrictive than the original guidelines drafted for the 1908 Games, were published in September 1911. Among them: All works presented were required to be original and directly inspired by the idea of sport. Size didn’t matter, except for sculptors, who were required to submit “small models not larger than eighty centimeters in height, width, and length.” While there were no language restrictions, the jury—a multinational collection […]
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway, Stephanie Powell Watts talks about her debut collection, Elvis as tragic hero, and authenticity in storytelling.
Gadgets, online personae, and constant motion threaten the extinction of solitude. Does our need for incessant connection threaten creativity?
I get a childish delight out of anachronistic mashups, so the Paris Review’s drunk texts from Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, and more are right in my wheelhouse: Read the full set on the Paris Review‘s site. Meanwhile, on The Hairpin, Mallory Ortberg imagines texts from Jane Eyre–the character: JANE WHERE HAVE YOU GONE I AM BEREFT AND WITHOUT MY JANE I SHALL SINK INTO ROGUERY i am with my cousins WHICH COUSIN IS IT THE SEXY ONE Please don’t try to talk to me again IT IS YOUR SEXY COUSIN “ST. JOHN” WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS […]
If you’re a semicolon kind of guy (or gal), you’re not alone: Ben Dolnick, writing in the New York Times, tells the story of his love affair with that much-misused punctuation mark: My disdain for semicolons outlasted my devotion to Vonnegut. Well into college I avoided them, trusting in the keyboard’s adjacent, unpretentious comma and period to divvy up my thoughts. I imagined that, decades hence, if some bright-eyed teenager were to ask me for advice, I’d pass Vonnegut’s prohibition right along, minus the troublesome bit about transvestites and hermaphrodites. By now I’d come across Isaac Babel’s famous description of […]
Our new feature is Christopher Hebert‘s debut novel, The Boiling Season (Harper). Hebert graduated from Antioch College, where he also worked at the Antioch Review. He has spent time in Guatemala and taught in Mexico, and he worked as a research assistant to the author Susan Cheever. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, and was awarded its prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction. He is Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries, and lives in Knoxville with his son and his wife, the novelist Margaret Lazarus Dean. In Michael Shilling’s introduction to […]
For the last two weeks we’ve been featuring Howard L. Anderson’s debut novel Albert of Adelaide, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Janna McMahan (@JannaMc) anna sutton (@bridgetjonesish) Marisa Birns (@marisabirns) Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!
