Suspend Your Disbelief

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Book of the Week: The Lighthouse Road, by Peter Geye

by The Editors

Our current feature is Peter Geye’s new novel, The Lighthouse Road, which was published by Unbridled Books in October. He is also the author of Safe from the Sea. Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He’s also worked as a bartender, banker, bookseller, copywriter, and cook. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he continues to live there with his wife and three children. In the introduction to his recent review of The Lighthouse Road, Contributor Aaron Cance writes: Set at the cusp of […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: Wild Girls

by The Editors

Our most recent feature was Mary Stewart Atwell’s Wild Girls, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Meryl Zegarek (@MZPR) daniel audet (@danielaudet) Steve Karas (@Steve_Karas) Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!


Blackout

by Lee Thomas

It was a wild night on the East Coast. For several hours, as late as yesterday afternoon, it felt on the ground like the threats and warnings and evacuations might be overblown, a product of a media hungry for Events and glued-to-the-television-worthy programming in the midst of election fatigue. Well. The power’s out on much of Manhattan south of 42nd street, which meant blackness last night as far as the eye could see, the dark hulking shadows of tall buildings. The images of houses along the Jersey shoreline with water to the second floor. The flooded subway tunnels. The several […]


Book of the Week: Wild Girls, by Mary Stewart Atwell

by The Editors

We’re particularly pleased to feature Mary Stewart Atwell’s debut novel Wild Girls as our current Book of the Week, because Atwell is one of our contributors. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she is months away from finishing a Ph.D. in literature, and over the last several years it’s been our great pleasure to publish her reviews and interviews on FWR. Her short fiction has appeared in Epoch, Alaska Quarterly Review, Faultline, and other journals, and in the anthologies Best New American Voices and Best American Mystery Stories. She lives in Missouri with her husband […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: A Working Theory of Love

by The Editors

Our most recent feature was Scott Hutchins’s A Working Theory of Love, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Karen Ferrero (@karenferrero) Ranee Dillon (@RaneeDillon) Jamie Fewery (@jamiefewery) Congrats! To claim your free copy, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books out there!


YA We Love: Der Struwwelpeter

by Lee Thomas

This summer some dear family friends gave us a few antique German children’s books for our son. They included a huge and heavy tome of Wilhelm Busch’s work for children – author of the savagely funny and come-uppance-heavy Max and Mortiz (look it up, it’s worth it) – and a curious little volume of (what do I call them?) morality tales for children called Der Struwwelpeter, which roughly translates from the German as “Shaggy Peter.” I’d seen a copy on my husband’s grandmother’s shelf, and even the cover illustration–fingernails like tentacles and ominous scissors–creeped me out a bit. Heinrich Hoffman […]


First Looks, October 2012: Fakes and The Art Forger

by Erika Dreifus

Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. First, W.W. Norton is releasing what strikes me as a must-read anthology for fiction writers: Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. Edited by David Shields and Matthew […]


YA We Love: Five Children and It

by Helen W. Mallon

My desk totem is a hundred-year-old children’s book. As a child, I knew its magic was true—the characters were too sharp not to be real. “What on earth is it?” Jane said. “Shall we take it home?” The thing turned its long eyes to look at her, and said: “Does she always talk such nonsense, or is it only the rubbish on her head that makes her silly?” It looked scornfully at Jane’s hat as it spoke. Meet the Psammead, a creature with stem-like eyes, found by five siblings on a country escape from London’s grit. It grants wishes by […]


The State of the State of the Book

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Fall has swept in to this part of Michigan, bringing with it the low, gray clouds and cool weather of October. But even with the overcast skies of the past few days, my spirits are still high after our State of the Book literary symposium two Saturdays ago. Nearly 900 people attended the symposium’s seven events, which stretched over eleven hours. And more than 30 authors with Michigan roots participated in the day’s readings, panels, and conversations. We also had the next generation of authors on hand. In fact, they kicked off the event! 826michigan timed this year’s OMNIBUS anthology […]




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