Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Spotlight on … YA

by Lee Thomas

By October 1 all those start-of-the-school-year jitters have worn off (especially if, like me, you’ve no current connection to an academic calendar). In honor of the younger generation of readers, for the month of October FWR will highlight YA lit. Books for young people differ slightly from children’s literature, bridging the gap where Squirrel Nutkin leaves off and The Brothers Karamazov picks up. But, as every serious reader knows, good literature knows no age limit. A Wrinkle in Time still feels as magical as when my father read it aloud when I was eight. Along with our regular content, between […]


On debut novels and debut "grownup" novels…

by Celeste Ng

It is probably ridiculous to even put “J.K. Rowling” and the word “emerging” in the same thought. (Excerpts from the Wikipedia article about her: “best-selling book series in history,” “net worth US$1 billion,” “forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007,” and “Most Influential Woman in Britain”—and that’s only in the introduction.) But I’m tempted to look at Rowling’s first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, in the same light as a more traditional debut novel. I know, it’s NOT not her first novel. But even “debut” authors usually have a few books under their belts, even if those novels have never […]


Book of the Week: God Bless America, by Steve Almond

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our new feature is Steve Almond’s most recent story collection, God Bless America, published last year by Lookout Books. Almond’s books include three collections of short stories: My Life in Heavy Metal, The Evil BB Chow and Other Stories, God Bless America; three works of nonfiction: CandyFreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, (Not That You Asked), Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life; and three DIY books: Letters From People Who Hate Me, Bad Poetry and This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and children. Almond is equally well […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: The Law of Strings

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our most recent feature was Steven Gillis’s The Law of Strings, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Jesse (@braincandybr) jamey hatley (@jameyhatley) C.R. Baker (@BornLiar) 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!


Letterpressing Baxter

by Fritz Swanson

Fritz Swanson has graciously donated time, talent and materials to create a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind edition of Charles Baxter’s poem “Please Marry Me” for The Great Write Off and The State of the Book. The top five FWR fundraisers for The Great Write Off will get one of only 100 copies of the poem handmade with care by Fritz.


Help FWR grow—join The Great Write Off! (UPDATED)

by The Editors

Here at Fiction Writers Review, we run this website as volunteers, in our spare time and out of our own pockets. We think we’ve got a great site with great content—and since you’re here, reading this blog, we hope you agree! This fall, we’re running our first-ever fundraiser, and it’s your chance to help FWR just by doing what you do normally: writing. On October 3-5, Fiction Writers Review will compete in The Great Write Off, a three-day write-a-thon. (Think walk-a-thon, but with writing.) It’s a friendly fundraising competition involving six Michigan lit organizations—each fielding its own team of writers. […]


Is it okay to say "Boring!" in workshop?

by Celeste Ng

Author and teacher Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich says YES—and in fact, she hopes more people will say it. Writes Marzano-Lesnevich: [W]orkshop students tend to forget that they’re required to be there. I don’t mean in attendance, sitting around a large table, but rather in the page—in the world of the story. They’re required to read. They’re even required to finish the piece. This simple requirement changes everything about their relationship to what’s on the page. I’ve come to think that this gap is at least partially responsible for stories that do well in workshop sometimes floundering out there in the real world. […]


Are You There, Author? It's Me, A Lazy Student

by Celeste Ng

As we’ve seen of late, sometimes professional book reviewers (or, rather, less-than-professional ones) forget that Authors Are People, Too. Well, so do book-reviewing students. Behold this exchange, in which a student turned to Yahoo! Answers to help write his book report on DC Pierson‘s The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To… and the author responded. Pierson posted the kid’s question and his response on his Tumblr feed, giving the kid some reasons he might actually want to read the book and suggesting strategies for doing it. Here’s an excerpt: I’m not going to sit here and act like […]


First Looks, September 2012: Tell Everyone I Said Hi and BASS

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. I can’t say I wasn’t warned that Chad Simpson’s essay, “An Epilogue to the Unread”—which connects the illness and passing of Simpson’s mother, her love for reading, examples of generosity in our […]




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