the very hungry children's book
by Anne Stameshkin
Via Literary Kicks: Check out these amazing cakes, inspired by rage at Kanye West’s stoooopid hate for books.
Via Literary Kicks: Check out these amazing cakes, inspired by rage at Kanye West’s stoooopid hate for books.
On June 11th, Pam Ehrenberg will make FWR a stop on the blog tour for her second YA novel, Tillmon County Fire (Eerdmans). Here’s an excerpt from School Library Journal‘s review (by Melissa Moore, Union University Library, Jackson, TN) of Tillmon County Fire: This cleverly plotted and well-crafted story of abuse and vengeance is told in pieces from the varying perspectives of a half-dozen teens, and Ehrenberg uses intertwining chapters to explore their motives and desires. Particularly compelling are the voices of Rob, a gay teen transplanted from Manhattan, and Albert, a developmentally challenged 16-year-old whose twin is befriended by […]
Andrew’s Book Club recommends Josh Weil‘s debut collection, The New Valley (Grove), as June’s Big House pick and Midge Raymond‘s Forgetting English (Eastern Washington UP), winner of the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, as its University Press pick. Also new on the ABC site is Andrew’s interview with Bonnie Jo Campbell, whose story collection American Salvage was a pick last month. **This week, FWR will publish Erika Dreifus‘ review of Forgetting English, so check back to read more about it.**
FWR writer (and often behind-the-scenes editor) Celeste Ng has been invited to attend the “oldest writing conference in America,” the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, this August as a Scholar. She’s promised to send us dispatches from the beautiful Green Mountains. Two other FWR contributors, Steven Wingate and Preeta Samarasan, were both Bread Loaf Fellows in 2008, and Steven was awarded the Bread Loaf-sponsored Bakeless Literary Prize in Fiction for stories from his debut collection, Wifeshopping. (Steven even talked a little about the conference in an essay for FWR last month.) Here are links to more about this year’s conference and […]
The fabulous Thisbe Nissen (Out of the Girls Room and Into the Night, Osprey Island, The Good People of New York, The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook) is starting a summer writing workshop in the Catskills. In her own words: Dear Everyone, Some of you may know that up here in Saugerties, NY we’ve been hatching a plan for a summer writing workshop, and now that we’ve got some official flyer-type-things and an application form and even a website, I’m sending this out in the hope that you all might pass it along to potentially interested students, former students, or anyone you know […]
At the Ann Arbor Book Festival, FWR’s Jeremiah Chamberlin talked with acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead about the process of writing his latest book, Sag Harbor, the art of manufacturing genuine nostalgia, and the duality of veering “between the capricious horribleness of the everyday and the absurd beauty of existence.” Click here to read their conversation.
FWR’s contributors are participating in some very cool programs, and we’re eager to know what other writers are up to over the next few months. Leave a comment here, or email fictionwritersreview@gmail.com to tell us where you’ll be writing, teaching, or otherwise fictionizing. (And check in tomorrow to hear more about the Catskill Studio for Writing.) 1. Natalie Bakopoulos is currently teaching a week-long writing workshop on the Greek island of Andros as a part of the Aegean Arts Circle, which was founded in 2003 by Amalia Melis. Stratis Haviaris, a poet and the founding editor of the Harvard Review, […]
Thanks to Erika/Practicing Writing for alerting FWR to the L.A. Times‘s new “Writers on Writing” feature, which publishes every Friday. This week’s upcoming installment will the the fifth, but there are already some very interesting essays, including a piece by Taylor Antrim on writing the second novel and last week’s essay by Rich Cohen: “Will Facebook kill literature’s ‘leave the past behind’ themes?” Read more about (and excerpts from) Taylor Antrim’s debut novel, The Headmaster Ritual, here, and more about Rich Cohen’s books, The Avengers and Tough Jews, here.
FWR Associate Editor Lee Thomas and I finally met face-to-face at this lovely dinner at Lee’s apartment. Behold her (amazing) homemade lasagna and plum cake! Not pictured: excellent conversation, graphic novel recommendations, and happy plotting for our website’s future.
This nearly week-old David Brooks op-ed is infuriating for many reasons (such as its writer’s blatant scoffing at and outright denial of–despite the current economic disaster–the notion that to run a truly successful company or country, a leader should have the prescience to realize that the world around him or her is always changing, the ability to connect with and understand that world and the people in it, and the imagination and flexibility to adjust to that world’s advancements and its people’s diverse and changing needs), but in the name of this website and our shared passion for fiction, dear […]
a taste: I want my life to be a Kelly Link story. I mean it, even though many of the characters in her stories are a little lost, literally or emotionally, and even though others are in danger. Pretty Monsters is intended to be a young adult collection of short stories. This in itself is new—there aren’t many YA story collections, are there? But even if there are, there is nothing like Kelly Link. It’s useful that a few of the stories in Pretty Monsters are republished from her earlier collections, Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen, because I […]
Asked about his childhood religious beliefs by an interviewer, Robert Stone once said, “I was in that very difficult position you get in when you really believe in God, and at the same time you are very angry: God is this huge creature who we must know, love, and serve, though actually you feel like you want to kick the son of a bitch.” Throughout his career, Stone has drawn upon this confluence of anger and belief—and the despair that often results—to create some of his most resonant work. At their best, Stone’s portrayals of men and women guided (and […]
