Suspend Your Disbelief

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Shop Talk |

writing time

by Anne Stameshkin

J. Robert Lennon, whose story collection Pieces for the Left Hand will be reviewed on FWR later this fall–and who was recommended highly to our readers by Lydia Davis–recently made this fantastic confession on behalf of all writers. We don’t spend much time writing. There. It’s out. Writers, by and large, do not do a great deal of writing. We may devote a large number of hours per day to writing, yes, but very little of that time is spent typing the words of a poem, essay or story into a computer or scribbling them onto a piece of paper. […]


Reviews |

Book of Clouds, by Chloe Aridjis

by Erika Dreifus

Chloe Aridjis’s first novel, Book of Clouds (Black Cat, 2009), proves an immensely pleasurable and thought-provoking read. Tatiana, whose father owns the largest Jewish deli in Mexico City, finds herself still living in Berlin long after winning a year there from the Goethe Institute. As a self-professed “professional in lost time,” Tatiana may challenge writer-readers’ assumptions about good characterization. And yet the novel succeeds and keeps us engaged in not only Tatiana, but in the novel’s real main character: the city of Berlin.


Shop Talk |

Andrew's Book Club: September Collections

by Anne Stameshkin

This month, Andrew’s UP pick is Triple Time (U of Pittsburgh Press), Anne Sanow‘s debut collection of linked stories about life in modern Saudi Arabia and 2009 winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Via the author’s website: For Jill, a young American living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, life is in “a holding pattern” of long days in a restrictive place—”sandlocked nowhere,” as another expat calls it. Others don’t know how to leave, and try to adopt the country as their own. And to those who were born there, the changes seem to come at warp speed: Thurayya, […]


Reviews |

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, by Ethan Gilsdorf

by Sophie Powell

Ethan Gilsdorf, a former Dungeons and Dragons addict and seasoned pop-culture and travel journalist, chronicles his international odyssey through the worlds of Harry Potter bands, medieval reenactment societies, World of Warcraft guilds, and massive fantasy conventions, to name only a few. In the process he learns to come to terms with his own attachment to the imaginary that has persisted into his forties. As a dedicated fairytale and myth fanatic myself, my curiosity was piqued by the title of the book which is at once a memoir, an insider’s guide to the world of gaming, and a quest that takes him all around the world to find answers not only to his own life, but to the larger question of why tens of millions of people turn away from reality and fully embrace fantastical other-existences.


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Miles from Nowhere's Paperback Tour

by Anne Stameshkin

The paperback edition of Nami Mun‘s Orange Prize-nominated debut novel-in-stories, Miles from Nowhere, will publish Tuesday, September 1, 2009. And Chicago magazine just named Nami Best New Novelist in their “Best of Chicago” feature. Here’s my own reviewlet of the hardcover: Miles from Nowhere began as a collection of linked stories (two of which I had the pleasure to read in workshop at Michigan). As a novel, the chapter-stories work together beautifully; Miles remains episodic, but breaks between chapters feel hauntingly like lost years…perfect for this particular story. Set in New York City in the 1980s, the book follows a […]


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The Great Geek Giveaway Contest

by Anne Stameshkin

On Monday, FWR will publish Sophie Powell’s review of Ethan Gilsdorf‘s memoir-adventure hybrid Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. In the meantime, this contest on the author’s website sounds fun. Click on that link for all the details, but here’s a snippet: What is your geekiest secret? Your freakiest fandom moment? Your most embarrassing gaming gaffe? In a brief essay, photo or video, we want you to spill the beans. The folks at Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks Headquarters want to know about that time you stalked your favorite Star Trek celebrity to a coffee shop, made a pilgrimage to a […]


Shop Talk |

Margaret Atwood's book tour / fundraiser / theatre piece

by Anne Stameshkin

To promote her new novel, The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood will be touring five countries and thirty-five cities, performing staged readings with trios of local actors who will also sing some of the book’s original hymns (set to music). A number of these events will also serve as fundraisers for BirdLife International. Here’s the author’s own take on the project (via the Times Online), and you can follow the tour’s progress on her blog and Twitter. Atwood gracefully owns “book tour overkill,” joking that “[t]wittering, or is it tweeting?” is actually quite “appropriate for a bird-saving project!” In […]


Interviews |

Know Then Thyself: A Conversation with Jeffrey Rotter

by Lee Thomas

Lee Thomas talks to debut novelist Jeffrey Rotter about the social risks of homemade clothing, museums as metaphors, the parallels between As I Lay Dying and reality T.V., and the ways in which imagination can change the world – for good and evil. The title of Rotter’s novel, The Unknown Knowns, alludes to that Donald Rumsfeld speech of linguistic loop-de-loops that would have driven George Orwell crazy; the book, which looks askance at our modern take on “Us vs. Them,” tackles the ontological questions presented by our vague and shadowy paranoia, but ups the ante considerably beyond the present moment in history to the personal crises that drive all good stories.


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Jeffrey E. Smith Editor's Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

The Missouri Review‘s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize Three winners, one per genre (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) will each receive $5,000 and publication in the journal. Finalists will receive $100 and be considered for publication. Submission info: You can enter online or by mail. There is a fee of $20 per submission, but this includes a one-year subscription to the journal, and entrants can choose between the print edition or the new digital format; the latter offers additional audio content and leaves a smaller carbon footprint. Submissions should be no longer than 25 pages of poetry or prose. Deadline: October […]


Shop Talk |

while we're talking book clubs…

by Anne Stameshkin

Politico.com is calling Obama “the next Oprah.” The president’s widely circulated summer reading list seems to have given every book on it a huge bump in sales, as indicated by these Amazon rankings (stats are via Politico) BEFORE = on Monday, before Obama’s list was released / AFTER = as of Wednesday): – The Way Home by George Pelecanos — BEFORE: no. 33,349 / AFTER: no. 328 – Lush Life, by Richard Price — BEFORE: no. 74,289 / AFTER: no. 10,295 – Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman — BEFORE: no. 231 / AFTER: no. 41 – John Adams […]




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