Suspend Your Disbelief

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Under the Influence… of Sands Hall

by Erika Dreifus

Immersed in a 9-to-5, year-round office job since early 2007, I haven’t led a fiction workshop for some time. But if I should inhabit that particular teaching role again, I’d want to remind myself how the job is best done. Ideally, I’d do that by sitting in on one of Sands Hall’s workshops. I met Sands when I enrolled in her “Tools of the Writer’s Craft: Novel” workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in 1997. I subsequently returned to Iowa to take other workshops of hers. We’ve stayed in touch, and I’m proud to say that we’re friends. In […]


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Under the Influence… of Arnost Lustig

by Charles Conley

I was the worst writer in my MFA program my first year.  I know this thought isn’t unique, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.  My confidence was shot.  I was lost as a writer and so concerned with impressing my teachers and fellow students that I had abandoned whatever it was that made me worth accepting into the program in the first place. The following summer, I attended the Prague Summer Program, where Arnost Lustig was my workshop teacher.  We began each class with jokes.  We wrote a fable every day.  We read (after a fashion) Aristotle’s Poetics.  We discussed […]


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Au Revoir, Nicole!

by Celeste Ng

As the new academic year revs up and our teaching-focused month winds down, we here at FWR want to take a moment and say a huge THANK YOU to our wonderful summer editorial intern, Nicole Aber. All summer long, Nicole provided invaluable assistance behind the scenes, as well as writing up some excellent posts for the blog (see below). No matter what challenge we threw at her, she handled it with aplomb! This year, Nicole will be Managing News Editor at the Michigan Daily, and we know she’ll be amazing there as well. Dear readers, please join us in thanking […]


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A Teaching Writer's Resource: Glimmer Train's Monthly Bulletin

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

I began submitting to Glimmer Train in 1997, the same year I received my undergrad degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan. That fall, following graduation, my now-wife and I moved to a small cabin on a lake in northern Michigan so that I could be “a writer.” I’d thought I needed to live deliberately, like Thoreau, to nurture my creative spirit. But as we’ve often joked since, the experience was more like The Shining–though with a lot less space. One positive during that experience, however, was that a story of mine received an honorable mention from Glimmer […]


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Book of the Week: Lit From Within

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Lit From Within, edited by Kevin Haworth and Dinty W. Moore. Published this year by Ohio University Press, the book is a multi-genre craft anthology that, in the words of the editors in the introduction to the book, “has its origins in the Ohio University Spring Literary Festival.” They go on to describe the goal of the anthology, saying, “What we have tried to do, in this collection, is to reflect the level of the conversation about poetics and the craft of writing that has taken place over the Lit Fest’s twenty-five-year history.” Contributors include Charles […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: A Kite in the Wind

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured A Kite in the Wind as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Danielle Davis (@writesinLA) Danielle Villano (@daniellevillano) Chase Burke (@chasedaway) To claim your signed copy of this novel, 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!


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Tastes Like Poetry

by Kevin Haworth

People tell me that I am a poetic writer. My response to this characterization varies from Thanks! to What does that mean? to Yes, my novel did sell like poetry to I want people to love my work in the way that poetry lovers love poetry, desperately and a bit dangerously, gripping the pistol under the pillow with one hand and the childhood stuffed rabbit with the other. But what, really, does this cross-genre accusation imply?  It’s meant as praise (I’m fairly certain), but wary praise, as if I’ve stumbled into a neighbor’s backyard party, where I’m welcome as long […]




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