Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

recommended event: Jewish Intellectuals and the Writing Life

by Anne Stameshkin

Tonight I’m looking forward to attending a (free!) panel discussion, Jewish Intellectuals and the Writing Life , at CUNY with Erika Dreifus (of Practicing Writing and The Practicing Writer). Here’s the description from CUNY Grad Center’s website, should any New York-based writers like to join us: EVENT: Jewish Intellectuals and the Writing Life DATE: 4/29/2009 TIME: 6:30 PM ADDRESS: 365 Fifth Avenue / Manhattan PHONE: 212-817-2005 ROOM NUMBER: The Skylight Room (9100) PRIMARY EVENT SPONSOR: Center for the Humanities SUMMARY: Join prominent intellectuals as they discuss the relationship between literary reputation, intellectualism, and Jewish life. Participants include Morris Dickstein, Ruth […]


May is Short Story Month on EWN – so let's talk stories

by Anne Stameshkin

Emerging Writers Network’s Dan Wickett is devoting May to reading and discussing short stories; his goal is three a day for a month — so just under 100 stories. Be sure to check it out. And let’s try a sister-experiment here: FWR contributors and readers, I invite/challenge (whichever word you find more motivating) each of you to read or re-read some short stories in May and write to me about one of them that really rocks your writerly world. I’m not talking full-scale reviews (though if what you write becomes something longer, that’s OK)…just a paragraph or even a couple […]


recommended reading: Jami Attenberg interviews cartoonists

by Anne Stameshkin

At Largehearted Boy, check out Jami Attenberg‘s first in a series of interviews with female cartoonists; this one is with Sarah Glidden. You can preview chapters from Glidden’s book-in-progress on the artist’s website, and if you haven’t yet read Jami Attenberg’s Instant Love (one of my favorite collections of linked stories) or her debut novel, The Kept Man, I recommend a trip to the nearest bookstore. Jami also had a great piece, “An Apartment Affair,” in the New York Times last month.


Olive Kitteridge wins Pulitzer

by Anne Stameshkin

Congratulations to Elizabeth Strout, whose Olive Kitteridge, a collection of linked stories (billed as a “novel in stories”) about a curmudgeonly retired schoolteacher in Maine, has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Finalists included Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves and Christine Schutt’s All Souls. You can read an excerpt from Olive Kitteridge here and the NY Times review here.


I was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin

by Anne Stameshkin

Last week, poet and activist Dustin Brookshire recommended Denise Duhamel’s work to FWR readers, and I failed to mention that Dustin has a poetry blog of his own, one bearing what may be the best name ever: I was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin. This month he’s featuring a very cool series with guest poets (including Mark Bibbins, Ellen Bass, and Denise Duhamel) called “How I Discovered Poetry”, and his site also hosts a longer-running series, “Why Do I Write?”


What are writers reading?

by Anne Stameshkin

Celeste pointed me to this great blog, Writers Read, where writers — among them emerging/debut authors Darrin Doyle, Kyle Minor, Greg Sanders, Kristina Riggle, Brendan Short, and Nathaniel Rich; and established authors Antonya Nelson, Porter Shreve, Darin Strauss, Rachel Kadish, and Jane Smiley — share what they’re reading. It’s interesting to see who reads mostly within genre and who branches out…


reader recommendation: poets Paul Siegell and Sharon Dolin

by Anne Stameshkin

To start your week with some verse, here are some poetry-for-prosers recommendations from poet Matthew Hittinger (author of Pear Slip, winner of the Spire Press 2006 Chapbook Award): Poemergency Room by Paul Siegell If you live in NY or a city with a similar mass transit system you may find it hard to garner the concentration to read poetry on the subway or bus (and who can blame you with all the poems being written in the conversations and through the actions of your fellow mass transit riders?). Here is a book whose rhythms are so attuned to the city, […]


The Unknown Knowns by Jeffrey Rotter

by Anne Stameshkin

On Thursday, Celeste read at Pete’s Candy Store with Jeffrey Rotter, whose debut novel The Unknown Knowns I’d been curious about. After hearing him read just a short excerpt, I picked up a copy. If the Dr. Seussish cover and Donald Rumsfeld allusion aren’t alluring enough, check out a sample here, and if Jeffrey Rotter is reading anywhere near you, don’t miss it. In the coming months, look for an interview with him here on FWR.


another excellent installment from P&W's Agents and Editors series

by Anne Stameshkin

This time Jofie Ferrari-Adler talks to literary agents Anna Stein, Jim Rutman, Maria Massie, and Peter Steinberg. Here are some tastes: What makes agents want to represent an author? Let us inside your heads a little and talk about what you’re looking at and thinking about when you’re evaluating a piece of fiction. STEIN: It’s really hard to talk about why a piece of writing is good, and moving—even if it’s funny—and what makes us keep thinking about something after we’ve read it. And it’s incredibly subjective. That’s why it’s hard for agents who represent fiction, especially literary fiction, to […]


recommended essay: "I Married a Novelist"

by Anne Stameshkin

Writers, do you find yourself romantically drawn (or even legally sealed) to others of our kind–or not? What are the advantages or disadvantages of sharing so much physical and psychic space with another writer? If you love reading about writerly couples, indulge in this essay from the Rumpus by novelist Eric Puchner (annotated by his wife, novelist Katharine Noel). Here’s a taste: Just as people prefer their mathematicians to be endearingly deranged, most people prefer their writers to be lonely schlubs. They seem to look at two writers living together as somehow unnatural, a zookeeper’s mistake. Perhaps it goes against […]


reader recommendation: poet Anne Carson

by Anne Stameshkin

Jessica Belle Smith recommends Anne Carson‘s Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998): A classics scholar and poet, Carson has made a literary career of transforming ancient tales into modern language and landscape. Her recent Oresteia re-imagines three ancient Greek tragedies, and more than a decade ago, Carson updated the myth of Herakles and Geryon. The resulting Autobiography of Red is a genuine delight for readers and writers of fiction and poetry. The life of Geryon, the red-winged monster obsessed with his camera and a boy named Herakles, unnerves as the best coming-of-age stories do, coming so close to […]




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