Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Supreme Court justices: secret fiction lovers

by Celeste Ng

We seldom think of judges as writers, but as any lawyer will tell you, written decisions are the bulk of the court’s work. Recently, the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing published interviews with the SCOTUS justices (as they’re known in legal circles), and surprise: many of them appreciate reading, especially fiction, as the basis of good writing. NPR reports: “The only good way to learn about writing is to read good writing,” says Chief Justice John Roberts. That sentiment is echoed by Breyer, who points to Proust, Stendhal and Montesquieu as his inspirations. Justice Anthony Kennedy loves Hemingway, Shakespeare, Solzhenitsyn, […]


Book of the Week: Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass. Published in April by Dzanc Books, this is Kass’s first collection. He is also the author of a chapbook of poetry, Invisible Staircase, a chapbook of essays, From the Front of the Room, and a one-man poetica performance, Wrestle the Great Fear. Kass teaches creative writing at both Pioneer High School and Eastern Michigan University. He also serves as the Literary Arts Director at Ann Arbor’s teen center, The Neutral Zone. In March of this year, Carlina Daun and Allison Kennedy sat down with their former writing teacher to talk about […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: The Oregon Experiment

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured The Oregon Experiment as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Ed Quest (@edquest) Shuchi Saraswat (@ssaraswat) Matt Ellsworth (@1MJE) 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!


Ann Patchett to open bookstore

by Celeste Ng

Disappointed by the lack of bookstores in her hometown of Nashville, writer Ann Patchett is taking matters into her own hands—and opening one. Reports the Christian Science Monitor: As Patchett’s been recounting in interviews on her book tour, a frame shop where she has been a customer since high school asked her if they should stock [her latest novel] “State of Wonder.” They made the offer because, sadly, Nashville’s bookstores – from big-box chains to the 30-year-old Davis-Kidd bookstore – have been shutting down. “It’s very weird to have a book coming out without a bookstore,” Patchett told The Tennessean. […]


A Portrait of the Artist as His (or Her) Own Words

by Celeste Ng

Artist and author John Sokol creates portraits of artists out of lines from their own works. Here’s another of his stunning “word portraits”—this is William Faulkner as The Sound and The Fury: Visit Sokol’s Facebook page to see more of his portraits, and should you wish to buy one to inspire you at your writing desk, they’re for sale on his website. (Via Flavorwire.)


Big Fiction Magazine

by Celeste Ng

We spent all of May talking about short stories, and of course novels get plenty of love all year round. But what about that neglected misfit of the fiction world, the long story or novella? Big Fiction Magazine is a new literary journal dedicated to the long story. From their website: Big Fiction was created with the goal of providing a beautiful home for long fiction that otherwise would not find a place in traditional literary magazines. We are a new journal for literature at leisure—stories to curl up with for an afternoon (or pack along on your next journey), […]


Book of the Week: The Oregon Experiment, by Keith Scribner

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Keith Scribner’s The Oregon Experiment. Published last month by Knopf, this book is Scribner’s third novel. His first, The GoodLife, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2000. He is also the author of the 2003 novel Miracle Girl. Scribner’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared in such places as TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, Quarterly West, The North Atlantic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton) and Sudden Stories: The MAMMOTH Book of Miniscule Fiction. He received both Pushcart and O’Henry Prize […]


Book-of-the-Week Winners: Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Valerie Suydam (@valeriesuydam) Chanel Dubofsky (@chaneldubofsky) Sara Habein (@sshabein) 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!


Open a book, become someone else

by Celeste Ng

A Lithuanian bookstore has created a gorgeous campaign called “Become Someone Else” (“Pabū kuo nors kitu”) showing the transformative power of books. The Love Agency, the advertising firm that created the campaign, has all of the images up online. (Via GalleyCat.) And there’s evidence that books have literal (ha ha) transformative powers as well. A study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine finds “each increasing quartile of print media use was associated with a 50% decrease in the odds of having MDD,” or major depressive disorder. In other words, the more teens read, the less likey they were […]


A Kindle for Dickens

by Celeste Ng

If Charles Dickens had had a Kindle, what would it have looked like? That’s the question art student Rachel Walsh tried to answer for her design class, which asked her to explain something modern to someone who died before 1900. Walsh’s explanation involved creating a visual metaphor: Since a 19th-century author wouldn’t have had any concept of downloads, e-readers, or the Internet, Walsh had to create a metaphor for the device that would resonate with Dickens. Realizing that a Kindle is just a lot of books inside a big book, she created an old-school version consisting of literal little books […]


Book of the Week: Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar, edited by Richard Ford

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, edited by Richard Ford. This anthology was created as a benefit for 826michigan, a non-profit organization located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. They offer drop-in tutoring, writing workshops, storytelling and bookmaking field trips, nighttime and weekend workshops, and various other community-related events and services. All are free of charge, always. Founded by Ann Arbor writer Steven Gillis, 826michigan is a chapter […]




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