Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

How far can book promotions go?

by Celeste Ng

My friends who are literary agents have told me about the many ways authors try to catch their attention: packages of cookies sent with their manuscripts; queries tucked into oven mitts shaped like sunflowers (of all things). But this might be the ultimate guerrilla book promotion: faking a kidnapping to promote your book. Yes. Mark Davis, a thriller writer, did just that. Reports the News Advance of Lynchburg, Virginia: His main character, Perno Morris, is a failed novelist who has grown weary (and, perhaps, been pushed over the edge of sanity) by a discouraging series of rejections by publishers. So […]


Journal of the Week subscription winners: PANK

by Michael Rudin

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our PANK Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Samantha (@schpallir) Art Allen (@punsultant) Jenny Howard (@jennifhow) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to PANK! Please email us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information, and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of PANK and the exclusive interview with co-editor Roxane Gay, you can read the whole thing in our blog archives. And remember: if you’d like to be eligible for future journal giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” […]


Unbound: a Kickstarter for books

by Celeste Ng

Unbound allows authors to pitch book ideas and interested readers to fund those books. Says the site: Unbound is a new way of connecting with writers. Most of the writers on our site will be well known, others will appear here for the first time. What’s different is that instead of waiting for them to publish their work, Unbound allows you to listen to their ideas for what they’d like to write before they even start. If you like their idea, you can pledge to support it. If we hit the target number of supporters, the author can go ahead […]


Reminder: Dzanc Books Fourth Annual Write-a-Thon Fundraiser Starts Today

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each year Dzanc Books hosts a Write-a-Thon to raise money for their charitable endeavors–The Dzanc Prize, the Dzanc Writer-in-Residence Program, Dzanc Day, and numerous other service-oriented endeavors that put writers in communities and classrooms around the country. This year’s Write-a-Thon starts today and runs through Sunday. Though there’s still time to participate! Sponsor a Writer The easiest way to support Dzanc is to sponsor one of the participating authors, a line-up that includes such writers as Laura Van Den Berg, Matt Bell, Eugene Cross, Kellie Wells, and Brian Sousa. Click here for the complete list. Donate No donation is too […]


Does YA fiction lead to dark thoughts, or do dark thoughts lead to YA fiction?

by Celeste Ng

Which came first, the moody teen, or the YA fiction that moody teens often gravitate towards? Linda Holmes of NPR responds to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that criticized YA fiction for being “too dark”: I’m more intrigued by the aspirational nature of the quaint but sad idea that teenagers, if you don’t give them The Hunger Games, can be effectively surrounded by images of joy and beauty. While the WSJ piece refers to the YA fiction view of the world as a funhouse mirror, I fear that what’s distorted is the vision of being a teenager that suggests […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: Knuckleheads

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Knuckleheads as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Artsieladie.com (@ArtsieladieHome) Adelphi MFA Program (@Adelphi_MFA) Mark Staniforth (@markbooks) To claim your signed copy of this collection, 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!


The less-great Gatsby

by Celeste Ng

What happens when you take The Great Gatsby and try to make it more “accessible”? This: Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. becomes this: Gatsby had believed in his dream. He had followed it and nearly made it come true. Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our […]


"That adrenaline rush, like an injection to the heart"

by Celeste Ng

Here’s a great essay by Joyce Carol Oates on the connections between writing and running. Here’s a taster: Living for a sabbatical year with my husband, an English professor, in a corner of Mayfair overlooking Speakers’ Corner, I was so afflicted with homesickness for America, and for Detroit, I ran compulsively; not as a respite for the intensity of writing but as a function of writing. As I ran, I was running in Detroit, envisioning the city’s parks and streets, avenues and expressways, with such eidetic clarity I had only to transcribe them when I returned to our flat, recreating […]


Stories We Love: "Ballerina, Ballerina"

by Tyler McMahon

(Editor’s note: “Stories We Love” made its debut as part of Fiction Writers Review’s Short Story Month celebration. But we love short stories year-round. So here’s another installment, courtesy of FWR contributor Tyler McMahon.) As an undergraduate, I took my first fiction-writing workshop around 1997. It didn’t go well. My peers were entrenched in Mafia stories and Christian parables. I failed to find my voice. The instructor was accepted into law school for the following fall, and declared there was no future in writing. Near the semester’s end, she invited one of her fellow graduate students, Eric Rickstad, to visit. […]


Bookshelf Porn

by Celeste Ng

Can’t get enough of beautiful bookshelves, stunning stacks of stories, juicy journals? Turn to the internet for your fix. Breathing Books posts amazing book-related photos every day, many featuring old leather-bound hardbacks: And the Guardian has recently started a Flickr group for bookshelf photos, asking readers for the stories behind their books and cataloguing systems as well. One commenter, who has a small owl statue peering out from between her books, notes, “Not really a bookend, more an owl sandwich. I’ve got quite a collection of childrens books featuring owls – I think it was the first bird type my […]


Rock Bottom to be adapted as musical

by Celeste Ng

FWR Contributor Michael Shilling‘s debut novel, Rock Bottom, will be adapted into a stage musical by the Landless Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.! The novel—and the new show—tells the story of the Blood Orphans, a once-great rock band, in Amsterdam on the last day of their final tour. The musical is a collaboration between Shilling, playwright/composer Andrew Lloyd Baughman, and songwriter/vocalist Talia Segal. It runs July 15th-August 7th at the D.C. Arts Center. And, as befits a show about a rock band, it contains explicit language, graphic adult situations, and nudity—so what are you waiting for? For more information, including […]




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