Suspend Your Disbelief

Recent Posts

Shop Talk |

recommended read: Fish Bones by Gillian Sze

by Laura Roberts

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I love Gillian Sze. Not in a “we’re romantically involved” kind of way, but yes, we were classmates at Concordia University for our undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing, and from the first moment I read her work, I knew she was a great writer. So you’ll have to forgive me if I gush over her first book of poetry, Fish Bones (published by DC Books’ Punchy Poetry imprint), because I’ve always had a bit of a girl crush on her. Hopefully that doesn’t sound totally creepy and stalkeresque. I just […]


Essays |

All That Poetry

by Laura Valeri

At Sewanee everyone mingled with everyone else—poets with playwrights with fiction writers, famous and not, published and not, emerging or well established. It didn’t matter. Therefore, when it was Andrew Hudgins’ turn to give a craft lecture, I was one of the first to go, eager to absorb what I could smuggle back to those students in my undergraduate workshop who had more of an ear for poetry than me, their fiction-writing professor. I needed to be at that lecture for professional obligations; I wanted to be there for personal desires. But just as I was beginning to reach towards the trellises of poetic symmetry, grasping for that hanging fruit, I heard Hudgins say, a mocking lilt to his voice, “…and then he became a fiction writer, like all failed poets tend to do.”


Reviews |

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field, edited by Tara L. Masih

by Sophie Powell

As a creative writing professor at Boston College, I frequently use collections of flash fiction, stories which usually run 1000 words or less. Given time limitations and the varying writing experience of my students, these versatile, word-limited pieces are a very approachable and satisfying form to work within. However, I always find myself floundering about when I try to explain and define this genre for the first time. It was therefore with keen interest that I picked up The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, an unprecedented gathering of 25 brief essays by experts in the field that includes a lively, comprehensive history of the hybrid genre by editor Tara L. Masih.


Shop Talk |

Fiction Writers Review 2.0

by Anne Stameshkin

Dear readers: FWR will be under construction this weekend (thanks to the amazing and talented Marissa), so apologies in advance if you check in on Saturday or Sunday and find (1) severe wonkiness or (2) nothing at all. Come Monday we’ll be updated, and we’ll have some awesome new features as well. Stay tuned!!


Shop Talk |

P&W's Agents and Editors Series: Jonathan Galassi

by Anne Stameshkin

Jofie Ferrari-Adler continues his must-read Agents and Editors series for Poets and Writers with this great in-depth interview with Jonathan Galassi, the president/publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Here’s a brief excerpt: [Jofie Ferrari-Adler:] What else are you looking for when you’re evaluating a piece of fiction? Are you looking for a certain kind of sensibility or anything like that? [Jonathan Galassi:] I think that would fall under voice. I remember when I read [Roberto] Bolaño’s Savage Detectives. I read an Italian version and just thought it had so much verve and humor. It was so sexy. It had a […]


Shop Talk |

RopeWalk Writers Retreat

by Anne Stameshkin

Benjamin Percy writes to FWR about RopeWalk, where he taught earlier this month: Historic New Harmony, Indiana, was the site of two nineteenth century utopian experiments, and in the same spirit, the The RopeWalk Writers Retreat offers up a small slice of heaven. Here, a competitively chosen pool of students study for a week under four prominent writers (faculty over the past few years include Andrew Hudgins, Erin McGraw, Sigrid Nunez, Lee Martin, Marianne Boruch, Kyoko Mori, among others). There are workshops and panels and readings and one-on-one conferences — the standard fare — but unlike other conferences, no one […]


Shop Talk |

summer reading by (and recommended by) Alan Cheuse

by Anne Stameshkin

NPR’s “Voice of Books” has a new book of his own, a collection of travel essays called A Trance After Breakfast. New Yorkers, come hear him read from it on Monday, June 22, at 7 PM at McNally Jackson (52 Prince St.)–and check out FWR’s interview with the author following the publication of his most recent novel, 2008’s To Catch the Lightning. Via NPR, don’t miss Alan Cheuse’s list of carefully chosen (and enthusiastically recommended) books you should read this summer, complete with compelling reviewlets and links to excerpts. If only all reviewers *loved* books the way Cheuse obviously does!


Shop Talk |

"I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy."

by Anne Stameshkin

In a single day — June 16, 1904 — Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus walked the streets of Dublin and the pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Today in cities across the globe, fans of the novel are celebrating with races, walking tours, pub crawls, readings, and performances. If you’re in Dublin itself, events began on June 13 and culminate today with a walking tour, Bloomsday breakfasts at the James Joyce Centre, readings and songs in Meetinghouse Square, and a screening of John Huston’s The Dead at the Irish Film Institute. New Yorkers, if you haven’t experienced Bloomsday on Broadway (at […]




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