Suspend Your Disbelief

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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 […]


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 […]


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 […]


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 […]


In a world where fifteen minutes is a "commitment"…

by Anne Stameshkin

Please read that subject line in Dramatic Male Movie Preview Voice. Today, Bookfox synthesizes some insightful comments on Seth Fisher’s piece “More Crappy News for Short Story Writers” (on The Rumpus), addressing the whole “why don’t people read more short stories if they have less time?” question. Thoughts? Comments? Revolutionary notions? I plan to discuss this question in depth when I (finally) review Lauren Groff’s wonderful collection, Delicate Edible Birds, this fall, and I’d love to hear what others think about it. Does a short story require a more focused kind of attention than most readers are able to muster? […]


NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest

by Anne Stameshkin

The flash-fiction / short-short-short trend continues… For Round II of this contest, NPR invites writers to submit an original work that begins with this sentence: “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Instructions, via the site: One entry per person, and no more than 600 words, please. Stories must be received by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25. We’ll post a favorite story weekly until the New Yorker‘s James Wood picks our winner and reads his or her story on the air. The winner will also receive a signed copy of Wood’s book, How Fiction Works. (And if you […]


The Collagist is born!

by Anne Stameshkin

I’m really looking forward to reading Dzanc’s newly launched online literary magazine this weekend. To learn more about The Collagist, read the debut issue‘s welcome letter/preview from editor Matt Bell. I’m especially interested in the inclusion of a novel excerpt, acknowledged as such; this issue’s extract comes from Laird Hunt‘s fourth novel Ray of the Star (forthcoming this September from Coffee House Press).


tattooed with lit

by Celeste Ng

If you have a literary tattoo, consider submitting it for this anthology by independent editors Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge: All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. […]


Short Story Special

by Celeste Ng

The Guardian has put out its annual Short Story Special, featuring work by Dave Eggers, A.M. Homes, David Mitchell, William Boyd, and Julie Myerson. This year, the Special also includes six short stories written by Guardian readers, culled from a pool of almost 2,000 by judges William Boyd and Julie Myerson. The winning story, “Broken Crockery,” is the publishing debut (!) of Lisa Blower, who is studying creative writing at Bangor University. Here’s an excerpt: Mum says my nan’s in hospital with Margaret Thatcher. […] My nan doesn’t like Margaret Thatcher because she’d kicked women in the shins and blew […]


recommended writers-on-writing: big think

by Anne Stameshkin

Earlier this year, Celeste and I blogged about how much FWR loves the TED series, in which speakers give a short talk about one topic of their choosing. Another site, big think–which describes itself as “a global forum connecting people and ideas”–also offers hundreds of short video interviews, plenty of which would be interesting to writers or useful for writing teachers. Indulge in some healthy procrastination from your novel, syllabus, or deadline project by checking out a few samples: * Elizabeth Gilbert discusses what it means when we call a book “Chick Lit” and shares some of her ideas about […]


library of Awesome

by Anne Stameshkin

These photos of the DOK Library Concept Center (Holland) by Jenny Levine, “The Shifted Librarian” on flickr, are like porn if you love libraries, modern architecture, and books. The mission of this library is, at least in part, to be a fun, inviting space–one where kids can stand on the furniture and eat while they read, and where books are integrated with music, games, and other media. Reading becomes socially awesome. And yet DOK also values reading’s solitary nature by providing–as an alternative to the wide-open, light-soaked spaces–nooks and secret rooms where readers can lose themselves in a book. Surrounding […]


The Lovely Bones trailer

by Celeste Ng

Paramount has just revealed the trailer for the film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. The film, directed by Peter Jackson, stars Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz, and Saoirse Ronan (Briony in the movie version Atonement, and no stranger to literary adaptations). I had a hard time imagining how this book would be made into a movie, and the trailer reminded me–strangely enough–of the Harry Potter films: a human world and a magical world running in parallel; fantastical CGI effects, like a giant rose blooming underwater; scary woods, and the hunt for a Very Bad Man. Meanwhile, the […]




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