Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Shop Talk |

3rd Annual Dzanc Books Write-a-Thon

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Take a day off to write next week. Or maybe just an afternoon. Either way, you can disconnect for a few hours, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and in the process help raise money for Dzanc Books. Each year Dzanc holds a Write-a-Thon to raise money for their Writer-in-Residence Program and the Dzanc Prize. These charitable programs help put writers into schools and other places like VA hospitals, prisons, and refugee communities. So you’ll not only be helping a great nonprofit organization, but also setting aside some time for yourself and your work. As someone who’s participated […]


Interviews |

The Truth About Fiction: An Interview with Peter Selgin

by JT Torres

Peter Selgin’s debut novel, Life Goes to the Movies, is based in large part on his experiences growing up in New York in the 1970s. JT Torres talks to the author about bringing fact to fiction, strategies for the revision process, why identity is so important in his work, and more. Following the interview is an exclusive excerpt from Selgin’s novel-in-progress, Hattertown.


Shop Talk |

"The Kids Are All Bright": Elizabeth Ames Staudt on childhood and writing

by Celeste Ng

Friend of FWR (and very talented writer) Elizabeth Ames Staudt reflects in the Kenyon Review on writing about children and one’s children becoming writers: Do writers want their babies to be writers? I feel like, in the way-too–many-celebrity-profiles I’ve read, most famous people hope their progeny will not head Hollywood-wards, but are quick to add that they will support them unflaggingly should they ultimately choose that dangerously glittery path. Except Britney Spears. I’m pretty sure she was quoted saying that she’d lock her sons in a room until they changed their minds. Okay, she really said she would lock them […]


Shop Talk |

In Defense of MFA Programs

by Celeste Ng

The more MFA programs spring up, the more people seem to look down on them—as if some kind of MFA-inflation and devaluation were taking place. Novelist Lev Raphael, however, recently wrote about why he found his MFA program valuable: I was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst MFA program for two and a half years back when it was rated in the top ten, for whatever that’s worth. The workshops kept me writing and turning in stories, even when I wasn’t in the mood, a good lesson to learn for a writer like me who later ended up doing […]


Shop Talk |

How old is too old for YA*?

by Celeste Ng

That’s what Pamela Paul wants to know in her recent New York Times essay. Observes Paul: But big type and short, plot-driven chapters aside, the erosion of age-­determined book categories, initiated by Harry Potter, has been hastened along by an influx of crossover authors like Stephenie Meyer and interlopers like Sherman Alexie, James Patterson, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen and John Grisham, to name just a few stars from across the spectrum of adult fiction who have turned to writing Y.A. According to surveys by the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women […]


Shop Talk |

On the Benefits of Disconnecting

by Celeste Ng

Author Elizabeth Benedict, editor of the recent anthology Mentors, Muses, & Monsters, discusses her experience being forced to unplug: Finding this blank book already so full of hope and history — from Hemingway’s to my beloved sister-in-law’s — was a bit like encountering a bear in the woods: it was just the two of us, and it was up to me to save my skin. I couldn’t hide, couldn’t escape to the computer or connect anywhere but in its cream-colored pages. I began by rereading the manuscript pages from the novel — and I winced two dozen times. It was […]


Shop Talk |

Moscow's Dostoevsky-Themed Metro Stop

by Celeste Ng

Subways are not known for being bright and cheerful—but Moscow’s new Dostoevsky-themed station takes subway gloom to a new level. The Dostoevskaya Station opened in June in northern Moscow as a tribute to the famed Russian author and features murals based on his works. Here’s one from Crime and Punishment: But some worry that the grim, black-and-white murals will have negative psychological effects on subway riders. NPR reports: Mikhail Vinogradov, who heads a psychological help center in Moscow, went on Russian TV to complain that the murals will make people “afraid to ride the subway.” Like other psychologists who raised […]


Shop Talk |

About

by Anne Stameshkin

Welcome to Fiction Writers Review, an online literary journal by, for, and about emerging writers. We are a community of writers dedicated to reviewing, recommending, and discussing quality fiction from presses big and small, from writers widely revered and little known–with a particular focus on emerging authors. Our goal is to get writers and readers talking not only about how fiction reads but how it works and why it matters. FWR gives due attention to new titles (in hardcover and paperback), but we also revisit the backlist: classics, new classics, and books that add richness to our various writing lives. […]




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