Suspend Your Disbelief

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The Big-Box Retailer Book Clubs

by Anne Stameshkin

Three Percent, a site dedicated mostly to international lit, recently featured two must-read posts — “Predatory Pricing Practices” (which includes a clip from the Colbert Report featuring Douglas Rushkoff) and “Anti-Fixed Book Price Essay” — about the predatory pricing practices that stores like WalMart are using to drive down book prices. In short, they’re employing books as loss leaders to sell other products. See also: the NY Times‘ recent article about big box retailers pushing a HUGE proportion of booksales these days and creating “bestsellers”. Could Target really be the next Oprah’s Book Club? It’s interesting to think that a […]


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Symphony Space: Selected Shorts

by Celeste Ng

NY-based (or visiting) writers: More short story love, this time with actors: Symphony Space presents “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” in which “spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.” Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer, performances often focus on a theme; for example, “Living Life to the Fullest” included Neil Patrick Harris reading “The Canoeists” by Rick Bass and Mia Dillon reading Pam Houston’s “How To Talk to Hunter.” And the series features plenty of stories by young/emerging writers, too, including Karen […]


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"Restoring" A Moveable Feast

by Celeste Ng

Scribner caused a stir earlier this year by announcing it would publish a “restored” edition of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Why? Because the original edition was edited after the author’s death by Hemingway’s fourth wife and literary executor, Mary, who reordered parts of Hemingway’s unfinished manuscript and included parts he had wished to exclude–including a chapter that that portrays his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in a negative light. Scribner claims the new edition is what Heminway actually intended: Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now, […]


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adventures in moving

by Anne Stameshkin

Dear readers, apologies for the lack of posting this past week; I have been readying to move from Brooklyn to Columbus, Ohio, and I remain neck-deep in logistics and work. As for FWR, exciting features are coming soon. I have a stack of material from our fearless writers — interviews! reviews! essays! book news! — just waiting to be posted, and by August 2 we will return to our regularly scheduled (or even somewhat enhanced) program. Come back then, and come back often.


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DZANC Books 2009 Best of the Web Anthology Launches

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Because we are an online journal ourselves, it’s no surprise that FWR is excited to announce the release of The Best of the Web 2009, published by DZANC Books. This is their second volume of the annual anthology, which selects the best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published online during the previous year. Click here to read my full review of Best of the Web 2009 here on FWR. Big Congratulations to all the writers included in this year’s collection, and to the editors for bringing together such a range of voices and talent.


Reviews |

It Ain’t Where; It’s What: The Best of the Web 2009

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each summer Dzanc Books releases The Best of the Web, an annual anthology of the year’s best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that was published online. Of all the “Best of” collections that come out each year, this anthology, with its multi-genre interests, probably has the most in common with The Best American Non-Required Reading series. And like that anthology, this one also shares an interest in work that is driven by voice, that isn’t afraid to test the limits of its form.


Essays |

The Copernican Author: On Point of View, Ptolemaic Characters, and Useful Unknowing

by Michael Byers

Ptolemy was trying to describe a system that didn’t exist. His point of view, literally, was wrong. He wasn’t looking at the planets from a fixed center, but from a body that was itself circling the sun. Copernicus’ eventual understanding of this fact led swiftly to the discovery of several other beautiful truths, including those of Kepler, Brahe, and Newton – suggesting that where you stand has everything to do with what you can see. And that if you’re standing in the wrong place, or facing the wrong direction, you’re going to see a very strange, distorted view.

All of which is to say, point of view matters. It might be proposed that an author does well to be relatively Copernican, even if his characters start out almost entirely Ptolemaic. … The supreme example of a character remaining Ptolemaic within a Copernican story is Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog”. In this story, Chekhov knows nearly everything, and Anna knows, perhaps, only a little less – while the point of view character Gurov knows almost nothing of what goes on around him.


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Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions (deadline: August 15, 2009)

by Anne Stameshkin

Via Matthew Hittinger, here is a call for submissions from The Writer’s Center just outside D.C. (in Bethesda, MD). Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The Writer’s Center, metropolitan DC’s community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships. Emerging Writer Fellows will be selected from applicants who have published up to 2 book-length works of prose and up to 3 book-length works of poetry. We welcome submissions from writers of any genre, background, or experience. Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer’s Center as part of […]


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nothing new under the sun…

by Anne Stameshkin

And this article, in fact, is 1.5 years old. But here are what Bob Harris (via the NY Times‘s “Paper Cuts” blog) names the “seven deadly words of book reviewing,” worn expressions to avoid if you want that novel you’re reviewing to sound remotely fresh. Briefly, they are: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft (verb), muse (verb), lyrical; read the whole entry for Harris’s compelling case against each. (Oops.) I’ll happily give the rest up…but can I keep lyrical? And don’t miss the readers’ comments; some of my favorites include: The “much-anticipated debut.” By whom? The author’s landlord? “that said” makes […]




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