Suspend Your Disbelief

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Shop Talk |

An old dog reads ebooks

by Charlotte Boulay

In my early 30s, I don’t think of myself as old very often. Except sometimes when I’m on the train or at a park and I see everyone (everyone!) who looks to be about my age or younger, and sometimes people a bit older than me, too, texting like the wind. I’m a super slow texter. Even with my fancy new smart phone, I don’t see myself getting faster any time soon. I guess texting is okay, but I still like to actually talk to people most of the time Am I just not willing to work at it? Or […]


Shop Talk |

Book-of-the-Week Winners: Wherever You Go

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Joan Leegant’s debut novel, Wherever You Go, as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congrats to: Wendi Corsi Staub (@WendyCorsiStaub) Vicky Ludwig (@greentea166) LauraCatherineBrown (@lauracbrown) 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.


Shop Talk |

10 Social Networks for Writers

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked before about the love-hate relationship many writers have with Facebook. On the one hand, it allows writers to connect with friends, fellow authors, and fans, making that whole writing thing feel a little less lonely. On the other hand—timewasting! timewasting! timewasting! Maybe you want to spend time on a social network and feel productive. In that case, Mashable has compiled a list of 10 social networks geared specifically towards writers. From Inked-In to Writertopia to We Like to Write, each offers different support to writers: critiquing, paid work, or just a community of other writers. Do you know […]


Shop Talk |

"On behalf of the American people, we simply want to know what it is you'd say you're about, in a nutshell."

by Celeste Ng

The Onion must have some book-lovers on staff these days—because their literature-related headlines of late have been painfully funny. See their latest, “Miranda July Called Before Congress To Explain Exactly What Her Whole Thing Is.” You should really just read the whole thing, but—okay, here’s a little taste: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at one point attempted a drastically different style of questioning in which he clearly explained to July what his own whole thing is in hopes that she would reciprocate in a way that everyone could understand. “Perhaps we’re approaching this in the wrong way; Ms. July, when I […]


Shop Talk |

How to Hatch a Novel

by Celeste Ng

Most writing classes revolve around the workshop—but the workshop format, in which participants usually read 25-30 pages of a student’s work and then critique it as a group, is ill-suited to the novel form, where 30 pages may not even be a full chapter. Is there a better way to give feedback on a novel-in-progress? Grub Street, Boston’s independent writing center, aims to find out with an experimental new course dubbed the “Novel Incubator.” (Disclaimer: I have taught for Grub Street, but have not been involved in the novel course.) Billing itself as a “year-long MFA-level course, team-taught by two […]


Essays |

We’re in love. It’s complicated.

by Natalie Bakopoulos

Marriage is so last century. Natalie Bakopoulos contemplates the demise of the marriage plot and Jeffrey Eugenides’s complex, undermining revival of it in his aptly-titled novel, The Marriage Plot. Is love still the ultimate trump card? Dear reader, it is. With some qualifications.


Shop Talk |

Robots Writing Novels?

by Celeste Ng

So a monkey typing into infinity will eventually produce Shakespeare—or so the theory goes. Maybe robots would be faster? The New York Times recently discussed the phenomenon of robots writing books. After an encounter with a robo-writer called Lambert M. Surhone—literally a computer churning out titles like “Saltine Cracker” and “Pagan Kennedy” from pasted-together online text—author Pagan Kennedy (yes) was fascinated and preplexed: Could robots ever be trusted to write original novels, histories, scientific papers and sonnets? For years, artificial-intelligence experts have insisted that machines can succeed as authors. But would we humans ever want to read the robot-books? Mechanized […]


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Parsing the Percentages: Peeking Behind the Curtain of E-book vs. Print Book Sales

by Joshua Bodwell

When media outlets that cover the American publishing industry report on book sales and e-books “vs.” print books, they often cite percentages of sales increases and sales decreases as evidence of the current state of affairs. In reality, percentages don’t and can’t offer a full picture. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) recently released book sales data for November 2011. The e-newsletter Shelf Awareness had this to say about the AAP report: E-books yet again had the biggest gain, but the 65.9% increase marked a slowing of what had been triple-digit increases for most of the preceding several years. In […]


Shop Talk |

First Looks: Birds of a Lesser Paradise and The Edge of Maybe

by Erika Dreifus

Hello, FWR friends. I’m delighted to announce a new blog series: “First Looks.” This series, which I’ll be writing each month, will introduce you to soon-to-be released novels and short-story collections that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. Consider it a public “to be read” announcement of sorts, a way for me to point out a new title (or two) every month and explain what about it has caught my eye. For the most part, we’ll be concentrating on books that fall within FWR’s chief interest: fiction by emerging authors. We’ll publish “First Looks” posts here on the FWR blog […]




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