Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Le Clézio's Nobel Lecture: "In the Forest of Paradoxes"

by Anne Stameshkin

In his wonderful Nobel lecture, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio argues passionately why the writer, literature, and literacy matter in a global society, responding in particular to Stig Dagerman’s Essäer och texter. I greatly admire how this speech–like the best fiction–is at once intimate and inclusive, intensely personal yet widely relevant. Some choice excerpts: If we are writing, it means that we are not acting. That we find ourselves in difficulty when we are faced with reality, and so we have chosen another way to react, another way to communicate, a certain distance, a time for reflection. The writer, the poet, […]


Kodi Scheer wins Dzanc Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

Non-profit publisher Dzanc awards this annual $5,000 prize based on (1) the quality of a writer’s work and (2) a proposal to undertake a specific community service project. This year’s winner, Kodi Scheer, will lead three 10-week writing workshops for patients, caregivers, and staff at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at U-Mich’s hospital. A recent graduate of the Michigan MFA program, Scheer was the recipient of the 2008 Creative Writing Prize for outstanding MFA thesis, and her stories have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and Quarterly West. She is writing a story collection with the working title Gross Anatomy. To read […]


shout-out: Preeta Samarasan on the lists!

by Anne Stameshkin

Preeta Samarasan‘s Evening is the Whole Day is getting some well-deserved list love. For the Guardian‘s best books of 2008, Ann Tyler names the novel as one of her top three (along with two other books reviewed on FWR, Miriam Towes’s The Flying Troutmans and Richard Price’s Lush Life), and Ali Smith also chooses it (along with Toni Morrision’s A Mercy and the reprint of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity) for the Times Literary Supplement‘s Books of the Year List. Congratulations, Preeta! And thanks to fabulous lit-blogger Bibliobibuli for the news and links.


Indie and Small Press Book Fair

by Anne Stameshkin

Check out the 21st annual Indie and Small Press Book Fair this Saturday and Sunday (December 6 and 7) at the New York Center for Independent Publishing and the General Society, 20 W. 44th St. Here is a list of book fair exhibitors and a complete schedule of sessions, readings, read-a-thons, and other events, including a panel discussion on the future of independent publishing, a live interview with Kelly Link, and a debate between David Rees and Matt Taibbi. Donations are encouraged. Stop by and show your support for independent publishing! Also check out New York magazine’s “The Curated Bookshelf,” […]


The Good Thief wins John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

Warm congratulations to Hannah Tinti! Check out the story here. Bonus: Hannah is guest-teaching my fiction workshop tomorrow. As a longtime fan of her work (and a One Story subscriber) I am thrilled to formally meet her and introduce her to my students. And a review of the dazzling The Good Thief is forthcoming (this weekend or next week) on FWR.


bring on the lists

by Anne Stameshkin

It’s December, officially List Season. Those long, all-encompassing ones are fun to bitch about and debate, but my favorite lists are short and specific. A short list demands more careful consideration on the part of the list-maker, and readers have a prayer of actually checking out most or all of its best-of books/films/what-have-you. Today Jessa Crispin (aka Bookslut, here for NPR) offers a concise and enticing list of best foreign (or non-American) fiction of 2008, with links to full reviews and excerpts. I, for one, am adding Metropole to my reading pile; Roberto Bolano’s books are already there, waiting for […]


Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano at the NYPL

by Anne Stameshkin

It’s not a work of fiction, but some are calling Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano (“the learned hand,” “the wise hand”) the most beautiful book in the world. The 62-pound hand-made volume–which features images of Michelangelo’s work and samples of his poetry, as well as commentary on the artist’s life and work–will be on display at the New York Public Library from Tuesday, December 2 through Monday, December 8. You can also see the book’s marble cover and take a tour of its interior here on FMR’s (its publisher’s) website. It takes six months and Renaissance artisan skills to hand-make a […]


2008 Bad Sex Award: the shortlist

by Anne Stameshkin

The Guardian offers some excerpts from this year’s worst sex scenes. Try reading them aloud at your Thanksgiving feast! From Simon Montefiore’s Sashenka: He’s a madman, she thought as he made love to her again. Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin has driven me crazy! He eased out of her again, showing himself. ‘Look!’ he whispered as she did. […] He made her forget she was a Communist.




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