Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Shop Talk |

[rumors] Might Say You're One of Them be the next Oprah pick?

by Anne Stameshkin

This is strictly gossip at this point, but another FWR contributor whispered in my virtual ear that the debut collection by our friend and former classmate Uwem Akpan has a shot at being the next Oprah’s Book Club selection. Others across the blogosphere are also betting on Say You’re One of Them as a strong possibility: Thom Geier at Entertainment Weekly (who named the debut collection the top fiction title of 2008), Gwen Dawson at Literary License, and Ron Hogan at Media Bistro, who points out that Oprah has never picked a short story collection before. (On Twitter, Oprah’s clues […]


Reviews |

How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely

by Richard Parks

What aspiring novelist doesn’t dream of early fame? Granted, it’s a willfully suppressed narrative—unwritten, unspoken, and perhaps for a noble few, unimagined—but most writers have contrived versions of a meteoric rise to literary success along with more prosaic early fictions. And, given the chance, who would shunt the regard of established authors, modest financial gains, and possible tenured teaching position that await? How I Became A Famous Novelist (Grove/Atlantic, July 2009), Steve Hely’s debut novel, uses this condition as pretext for rollicking satire.


Shop Talk |

co-muse-ing: We Are the Friction

by Anne Stameshkin

Lee just sent me this link (from DesignSponge) about We Are the Friction, a new book featuring stories by twenty-four authors and illustrations by twenty-four artists. But this is no typical collection: its contributors were paired up specifically to inspire work from each other…to illustrate a writer’s story or put words to an artist’s illustration. This is the second book project from UK-based Sing Statistics‘ co-editors (and contributors) Jez Burrows and Lizzy Stewart, who describe We Are the Friction as “an erratic, eclectic collection of work that takes in space travel, Japanese deities, monster husbandry, and the Marx Brothers. We […]


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when writers stop drinking (or start taking meds, or start reading Peter Kramer)

by Anne Stameshkin

While doing research for his debut novel, In the Rooms (about a literary agent named Patrick Miller who feigns, in the tradition of Dexter and Fight Club, an addiction as a means to an end…in this case, signing a literary legend), Tom Shone studied the effects of sobering up (or not) on some famous writers, as well as their widely differing attitudes toward recovery, rehab, and programs like AA. Here are some of his findings in this essay for Intelligent Life magazine. A couple of, er, tastes: Cheever emerged from rehab a different man, 20 pounds lighter, feeling 20 years […]


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Writing Regimen from the Southeast Review

by Anne Stameshkin

The Southeast Review‘s Writing Regimen is a 30-day writing project for poets, essayists, and fiction writers who crave some motivation and structure for a concentrated period of time. Another session (for adults) starts on October 1. (If you’re interested in the Young Writers’ Regimen, the next one begins August 31.) For $15, writers will get the following: daily writing prompts; a daily reading-writing exercise; a “riff word” of the day; a podcast of the day from an editor or writer; a quote of the day from a famous writer; weekly craft talks from established writers; a free copy of the […]


Reviews |

Nothing but a Smile, by Steve Amick

by Charles W. Brice

Steve Amick’s superb second novel, Nothing But a Smile (Pantheon, 2009), opens in June of 1944, with Winton (“Wink”) S. Dutton, a promising young cartoonist in civilian life, walking the streets of Chicago. Wink is home from the war early, his drawing hand having been mangled when, hung-over while doing an assignment for Yank Magazine, he misheard an ensign’s instructions and touched a submarine flywheel that he should have simply drawn. But prior to shipping back home, Wink had promised his buddy, Bill (“Chesty”) Chesterton, to look up his wife, Sal, in Chicago, so he might tell her how faithful Chesty has been to her, and how much he loves her. And right away, Amick has readers worrying over their meeting; the bleached bones of an affair have been set out in a row…


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introducing Cerise Press, a new lit journal

by Anne Stameshkin

Cerise Press has just launched their debut issue, which features artwork and photography as well as poetry, prose, translations, interviews, and reviews by writers such as Tess Gallagher, Ray Gonzalez, Laura Kasischke, Robert Kelly, Pura López-Colomé (translated by Forrest Gander), and Hai Zi (translated by Ye Chun). Click here for a full list of contributors and here for the Table of Contents by genre. This new online journal is a collaborative effort between three French and American editors (writer-translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain [Greta Aart] in Paris, poet Sally Molini in Nebraska, and poet Karen Rigby in Arizona) who aim to (per […]


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hey, you've got to hide your work away

by Anne Stameshkin

Kathryn just sent me this article by Joseph Epstein (for In Character). From the first few paragraphs of “Blood, Sweat, and Words,” I thought the piece might explore how much of the effort behind an author’s work shows in the work itself (and what impact this has on said work’s overall effect); instead, it focuses more on how writers choose to talk, outside of actually making art, about the work that goes into doing so. As a writer yourself, how do you feel about authors who, when they talk about the craft of writing or their personal process, make it […]


Interviews |

Getting the South Right: A Conversation with Jesmyn Ward

by Nico Berry

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. Her first novel, Where the Line Bleeds (Agate, Nov. 2008), is about twin brothers navigating life after high school in a small Gulf Coast town. Where the Line Bleeds is an Essence Book Club Selection, a 2009 Honor Award recipient from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and a nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Jesmyn Ward’s essays and fiction have been published in Oxford American, A Public Space, and Bomb magazines. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, and she is currently entering her second year as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford.

Nico Berry spoke to the author by phone as she soaked up the summer heat back home in DeLisle, Mississippi.


Shop Talk |

Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival

by Anne Stameshkin

On Saturday, August 22 at 3 PM, come to the monument in Fort Greene Park (Brooklyn, NY) for the (FREE) fifth annual Summer Literary Festival; the event is presented by the New York Writers Coalition (NYWC), Akashic Books, GTHQ, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, and the Walt Whitman Project. Brooklyn-based authors Colson Whitehead, Toure, and Stacey Ann Chin will share the reading podium with young writers (ages 7-17) from the NYWC’s free creative writing workshops in the park. Visit the NYWC’s website for more details. Sadly I just moved away from Fort Greene, but I highly recommend a visit to […]




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