Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Book of the Week: The Law of Strings, by Steven Gillis

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our new feature is Steven Gillis’s most recent story collection, The Law of Strings (Atticus Books, 2012). Gillis is the author of four previous novels, Consequence of Skating (2010), Temporary People (2008), The Weight of Nothing (2005), and Walter Falls (2004), as well as an earlier story collection, Giraffes (2007). He is also the founder of 826michigan and the publisher of Dzanc Books—one of the great contemporary forces in indie publishing. In the introduction to Tyler McMahon’s recent interview with Gillis, he describes the collection as “strange, surprising, and ever original.” As McMahon notes, the collection “features magicians, tightrope walkers, […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: We Sinners

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our most recent feature was Hanna Pylväinen’s We Sinners, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Tanya Egan Gibson(@tanyaegangibson) Lisa Hechesky (@_creativelisa) Auden Johnson (@audendj) 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!


Novel-writing as performance art

by Celeste Ng

What an awesome and terrifying idea: novelist Silvia Hartmann will write her next novel live on Google Docs and let anyone who wants to follow along—and send her feedback on her work. (Via.) Hartmann explains in a press release on her website:     This project, known as “Hartmann Book Live” aims to go one step further and give fans the chance to not only see the manuscript being typed, but to also comment on the storyline and provide feedback as the novel develops. […] On Wednesday, 12th September at 9am the author will let her social network followers know […]


Writer, Reject Thyself

by Celeste Ng

Okay—so perhaps your take-home message from the recent Giraldi-Ohlin incident was “Oh my god, I hope that I never get a review like that.” Unfortunately, at some point, every writer usually gets some harsh feedback—in a workshop, in a review, or from a reader. (Discuss: which writer is most fortunate, and why?) Anyway, when you receive said harsh feedback, your options are: A) Lash out at reviewers (pretty much never a good plan) B) Curl up under chair with bottle of whiskey and/or teddy bear C) Develop thicker skin, keep head down, keep working on next project Should you choose […]


Is there such a thing as a perfect sentence?

by Celeste Ng

Recently, Publishers Weekly posted a provocative list of “5 Perfect Sentences.” Here’s one, from “A Romantic Weekend” by Mary Gaitskill: He was beginning to see her as a locked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off the flowers. Now, I love this sentence, but the list raises the question: is it perfect? It’s beautiful, sure—and over at BookRiot, Greg Zimmerman has a wise and thoughtful post about what makes a beautiful sentence. But what does it mean to say something is a “perfect” sentence? Perfect might not mean lush, or beautiful, or […]


Book of the Week: We Sinners, by Hanna Pylväinen

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our new feature is Hanna Pylväinen‘s debut novel, We Sinners (Henry Holt & Co). Pylväinen is from suburban Detroit. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College and received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was also a postgraduate Zell Fellow. She is the recipient of residencies at The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachussetts. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn, where she is completing her second novel, The End of Drum Time. In the introduction to Jennifer Tomscha’s recent interview with Pylväinen, she writes: Hanna Pylväinen’s debut novel, We […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: Rise

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Our most recent feature was L. Annette Binder’s debut collection Rise, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Pete Palamountain (@ppalamountain) Alex Washoe (@alexwashoe) Daniel Audet (@danielaudet) 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!


Earn your internet access—by writing

by Celeste Ng

Writers are full of tricks to get themselves to actually WRITE. We’ve covered a lot of them here on FWR: positive reinforcement (with tools like Written? Kitten!, which rewards you with photos of cute cats), fear (with apps like Write or Die, which plays annoying noises—or deletes your work!—if you stop writing), and flat-out self-blackmail. Here’s yet another addition to your arsenal, O Writer In Need Of Motivation. A new program, Blockr, lets you set goals and blocks you from the internet until you’ve completed them. Says the Blockr site: Today, the sirens we face are glowing rectangles. As Odysseus […]


Sticks and Stones: On Harsh Reviews

by Celeste Ng

Does anyone actually believe that words can never hurt you? Come on, people—we’re writers. If there’s anything we believe in, it’s that words have power: to inspire, to move, and—yes, I’m afraid, to wound. “Mean” reviews (and their counterpart, “too nice” reviews) have been a topic of much discussion for the past few months, but things reached a frenzy this past week when the New York Times published a scathing double-review of Alix Ohlin’s new novel and collection, Inside and Signs and Wonders. Writers everywhere jumped up to defend Ohlin, defend Giraldi, and question whether harsh reviews have a place […]




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