Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Shop Talk |

When to stop working for free …

by Lee Thomas

A few weeks back, I blogged about the AOL purchase of the Huffington Post and the questions and ethics of when writers choose to write for free. Yesterday, GalleyCat reported that Visual Art Source publisher Bill Lasarow has ceased to post his content for free on the HuffPo site and calls for a more general bloggers’ strike. In Lasarow’s original manifesto on why he feels strongly about this issue, he states: We think it is incumbent upon the many writers and bloggers to form a negotiating partnership with Huffington/AOL in order to pursue these and other important matters so as […]


Interviews |

That Tar-Black Taste: An Interview with Vladislav Todorov

by Steven Wingate

Where do film noir, post-communist Bulgarian fiction, and black comedy intersect? In Vladislav Todorov’s searing noir-meets-social-commentary novel, Zift. Contributing Editor Steven Wingate and Todorov discuss poisonings, the resurgence of narrative fiction in post-communist Eastern Europe, the idea that “many people enjoyed spying on their neighbors” for the state, and much more.


Shop Talk |

On Choosing A Font

by Celeste Ng

My sister, a engineering professor, is writing a book about how to encourage women to pursue engineering. She plans to self-publish the book through Lulu, since the print on demand strategy makes perfect sense for the specialized audience for such a book. And because I’ve worked in publishing, she asks me a lot of questions about layout and format and marketing—topics that are, sadly, way out of my field of expertise. In self-publishing, everything is up to the author: the size of the book, binding type, even the font. That can make for a bewildering self-publishing experience, and the best […]


Shop Talk |

Psst! I'll give you print books for that Kindle.

by Celeste Ng

Having post-holiday Kindle regret? Microcosm Publishing, of Portland, OR, will trade $189 worth of paper books for your used Kindle. (Via.) Says the publisher’s website: Beginning RIGHT NOW you can bring in your Christmas Kindle to the Microcosm store in Portland (636 SE 11th) and trade it in for its worth in new or used books and zines! That’s right! Why let fad technology kill print when you can take a stand and fill up your shelves in the process. (Don’t worry, we won’t tell your parents.) And make sure to bring a friend to help you carry all your […]


Shop Talk |

Thursday Morning Candy: Fresh Pressed

by Celeste Ng

This week, we bring you not a traditional journal but Fresh Pressed, the biannual newsletter from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. CLMP is an organization dedicated to serving independent literary publishers, offering a biweekly e-newsletter, a literary journal circulation database template to help lit mags manage their records, workshops and roundtables, various online resources, and several publications. The current edition (February 2011) of Fresh Pressed contains audio versions of panels and workshops from AWP 2011 and CLMP’s Fall 2010 LWC}NYC (Literary Writers Conference in New York City). Topics include: “Editor as Mentor: Literary Magazines and Emerging Writers” (a […]


Shop Talk |

Happy Read Across America Day!

by Celeste Ng

Today, March 2, is Read Across America Day, in honor of Dr. Seuss‘s birthday. (Really—here’s the official presidential proclamation.) Funded by the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the event’s goal is simple: to motivate children to read. Says the event’s website: The First Lady and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel welcome a star-studded lineup of readers and 400 local schoolchildren to the Library of Congress today for the national kickoff of NEA’s Read Across America. Who’s grabbed a hat to read with the Cat? Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Jessica Alba, Superbowl champion Donald Driver, Top Chef host […]


Shop Talk |

Play it again, Sam

by Lee Thomas

Recently a friend turned me on to Ravens & Chimes, whose first album happens to be titled “Reichenbach Falls”—which, of course, is a reference to the famous site where Sherlock Holmes “died” only to be resurrected by Arthur Conan Doyle after years of reader heckling. This sparked a bit of my own sleuthing on the interwebs. Bookride has a pretty comprehensive list of band names inspired by literature, including: The Grateful Dead (originally a book by Gordon Hall Geroud, though the band claims it was ‘the outcome of a night of stoned lexicology’) Steppenwolf (Holla, Herr Hesse!) Tears for Fears […]


Shop Talk |

Doodles of Famous Authors

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps it’s pure nostalgia, but here on the blog we’ve been keeping a running list of things we lose when a book moves from physical object to digital file: the dedications and notes on the flyleaf, the deckle edges, careful typesetting, artistic covers. Here’s something else to add to the loss column: marginal doodles. Flavorwire has compiled a gallery of the idle squiggles of famous writers, offering an amusing and fascinating glimpse into the authors’ minds. For instance, Sylvia Plath depicted a nightmare of being chased by a hot dog and a marshmallow (this just cries out for Freudian interpretation), […]


Shop Talk |

A bad time for writers? Not if you're a "debutant."

by Celeste Ng

True or false: It’s harder now to get published than ever. Answer: It depends. In the Financial Times, Adrian Turpin argues that the picture for debut novelists isn’t as bleak as you’d think: For most literary authors, the not-so-brave new world of publishing by numbers is terrible news. But there is one type of writer exempt from its strictures: the first novelist. Unsullied by inconvenient sales figures, the debutant exists uniquely in a state of prelapsarian grace, a blank canvas on which publishers can dream. […] Even recession has failed to dent the perennial desire for the new. While the […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Oracle of Stamboul, by Michael David Lukas

by Anne Stameshkin

Each week Fiction Writers Review gives away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Alison Espach’s debut, The Adults, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Annie Angelides, Vanessa Heng, and Jackie Reitzes. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of Espach’s novel. This week we’re pleased to feature Michael David Lukas’s debut novel The Oracle of Stamboul (Harper). Lukas has been a Fulbright scholar in Turkey, a late-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a Rotary scholar in Tunisia. His writing—fiction and nonfiction—has been published in the […]




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