Suspend Your Disbelief

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Stealing Pleasure: Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief Series

by Charlotte Boulay

I’ve come a bit late (only 14 years or so) to the wonder that is Megan Whalen Turner, author of the young adult fantasy series The Queen’s Thief. Of all the books I’ve read in recent memory, not many compare to this series, which is serial narrative of the best kind—the kind that gets richer and more complex as it develops. Before this month, there were three novels: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia. A fourth, A Conspiracy of Kings, has just been released. I can’t wait to read it.


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FWR's Latest Features

by Anne Stameshkin

It’s been a busy few weeks at Fiction Writers Review: here’s a roundup of some of our recent features: John Madera reviews Leni Zumas’s collection Farewell Navigator: “There is a seductive element to how these narratives unfold: a slow accretion of details, together with the use of fragmentation, absence, and space, achieves a confluence of associations, connections, and even some kind of understanding.” Mary Stewart Atwell reviews Pieces for the Left Hand, by J. Robert Lennon, describing this collection of linked short-short stories as “shar[ing] with the work of [Stuart Dybek and Lydia Davis] an interest in the precise image […]


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Jim Crace's Last Book

by Celeste Ng

We love our debut novels here at Fiction Writers Review. As a site devoted to emerging writers, we love calling attention to the start of a literary career and the promise of a new voice. But here is some news of a very different sort: recently, veteran author Jim Crace made news by announcing that his next novel will be his last. The Independent reports: “Writing careers are short,” [Crace] expands. “For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely […]


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Reading Rainbow Resurrected?

by Celeste Ng

Six months ago, we here at FWR (and many others) mourned the end of long-running PBS show Reading Rainbow. Now, rumor has it that Reading Rainbow may make a comeback. Host LeVar Burton recently tweeted: You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in the works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you don’t have to… If you can complete that sentence, you’re probably one of the millions who can’t wait to see this show—which encouraged kids to love books and reading—back on the air. No further details have been released yet, but we can hope, right? Via.


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2010 Asian American Short Story Contest–DEADLINE EXTENDED

by Celeste Ng

Hyphen Editor Neelanjana Banerjee reports that due to excellent response to the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest, the contest deadline has been extended to April 12, 2010. As a reminder, the contest is open to all writers of Asian descent living in the United States and Canada, and there is no required theme. This year’s judges are Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin. Ten finalists will receive a one-year subscription to Hyphen and a one-year membership to Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and one grand prize winner will also receive $1,000 and publication in Hyphen. Read our earlier post about the […]


Reviews |

Long for This World, by Sonya Chung

by Celeste Ng

The cover of Sonya Chung’s debut novel, Long for This World (Scribner, March 2010), shows a young woman gazing out over a wide ocean, raising a camera to her eye. Chung’s main character is a photographer, but that’s not the only reason this cover is so apt. The novel unfolds like a collection of intimate snapshots, telling a story of loss and unexpected renewal.


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In Defense of Comic Novels, Part II

by Celeste Ng

Recently we discussed a Times article about why comic novels often get overlooked when it comes to literary awards. Over at BlackBook, author and Columbia professor Sam Lipsyte adds his thoughts on the status of funny fiction today: Do you feel that literary fiction is afraid to make people laugh these days? I think there’s a worry that if it’s funny then perhaps there’s something slight about it. That it’s not as important as a deeply researched, earnest, historical novel, or a kind of humorless tale of contemporary life. I think there possibly was a moment in the ‘60s and […]


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March Madness for Books

by Celeste Ng

So it’s March, which means that if you work in an office, all you probably hear are things like “Northern Iowa upset KU?!” and “Can you believe Cornell is still in this thing?” and “OMG all this is really f*ing up my bracket.” If, like me, you could not care less about college basketball but secretly wish that you, too, could have the thrill of completing a tidy little chart and enjoying some head-to-head competition, The Morning News has a solution: the Tournament of Books. Yes, the very concept of a matchup between books is a little silly—especially when the […]


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The End of Publishing: The Video

by Celeste Ng

We’ve had book trailers and vooks and now… a video about the end of publishing. (Or is it?) DK (Dorling Kindersley) Books put this clever video together for a sales conference: The Penguin website offers some insight into the creation of the clip: We asked DK to give us a list of facts and statistics about publishing in 2010, and where they see it going in the future, and then our scriptwriter, Jason LaMotte took this information and wove the facts into the current script.




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