Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Books in the bedroom?

by Celeste Ng

Sure, you love them. But do you want to sleep with them? Design blog Apartment Therapy recently surveyed its readers on whether bookcases belonged in the bedroom. Commenters weighed in passionately on both sides. Those opposed to books in the bedroom offered a variety of reasons, from aesthetics: I think bookcases are fine for a kid’s room — to keep their own personal books — but otherwise, books belong in a less intimate and private space. Bookcases in a a grown-up bedroom are too cluttered and distracting. to psychology: The last time I had a bookcase in my bedroom was […]


"Find it here. Buy it here."

by Celeste Ng

One of my favorite bookstores, Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA, has a new sign up: The sign is intended to remind patrons that buying books in indie bookstores—not just browsing there—is what keeps those stores alive. Explains the bookstore’s email newsletter: The sign is in response to a growing trend at Harvard Book Store (and indeed at bookstores around the country). Folks come in, browse our shelves, get help from booksellers, attend our free events–but then make their purchases online at Amazon. If you like our store and enjoy our services, we’d ask you to think about the power of […]


Thursday Morning Candy: Noting:books

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked about writing notes in the margins of books quite a bit on FWR, but what if you want to keep track of those notes over the long term, or share those notes with other people? Noting:books can help you do just that. Says the site: Noting:books is a collection of microblogs (“notebooks”) — individual readers tracking the books they’ve read and noting their thoughts. You can look through any person’s notebook, or you can look at the page for any book to see everyone’s notes on it. […] To start your own notebook, all you need to do […]


How to Steal Like an Artist

by Celeste Ng

Writer Austin Kleon offers this witty, yet sincere bit of advice on the writing life: “How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me).” An excerpt: Your job is to collect ideas. The best way to collect ideas is to read. Read, read, read, read, read. Read the newspaper. Read the weather. Read the signs on the road. Read the faces of strangers. The more you read, the more you can choose to be influenced by. Identify one writer you really love. Find everything they’ve ever written. Then find out what they read. And read all […]


Journal of the Week subscription winners: Gulf Coast

by Michael Rudin

We’re delighted to announce the winners of our Gulf Coast Journal of the Week giveaway, chosen at random from our Twitter followers. Congratulations to: Lesley Clayton (@lesleyclayton) Kristin Pedroja (@kramblings) Michelle Judd (@mjudd) You’ll each receive a complimentary one-year subscription to Gulf Coast! Please contact us at winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com with your contact information and we’ll coordinate the rest. If you missed the profile of Gulf Coast and the exclusive interview with editor Ian Stansel, 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 […]


Book of the Week: Touch, by Alexi Zentner

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Alexi Zetner’s debut novel Touch. Alexi Zentner was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, and currently lives in Ithaca, New York. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Walrus, Slice Magazine, and Orion Magazine, and other publications. His short story “Touch” was featured in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 where it was chosen as a jury favorite. His short story “Trapline” was awarded the 2008 Narrative Prize and named to the Best American Short Stories 2009 list of “100 Other […]


Sims, meet literature. Literature, meet The Sims.

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps you’ve seen the work of Next Media Animation, which animates recent news stories into (unintentionally?) hilarious Sims-style 3-D video clips. (Seriously. If you haven’t seen these before, check them out now. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.) Anyway, now this 3-D technology is being used for something educational. The New York Times reports that college literature classes are using 3-D animations to bring literature to life for students: Prof. Katherine Rowe’s blue-haired avatar was flying across a grassy landscape to a virtual three-dimensional re-creation of the Globe Theater, where some students from her introductory Shakespeare class at Bryn Mawr […]


Short Story Month 2011: The Collection Giveaway Project

by Lee Thomas

Inspired last year by the Emerging Writers Network—who inaugurated May as Short Story Month in 2007—and the Big Poetry Giveaway for National Poetry Month, Fiction Writers Review is excited to launch our second year of The Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to raise attention for short story collections. Warm thanks to FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, who suggested FWR as a home for this project last year and will not only be participating on her own blog, but will also be helping FWR run the project right here. To participate in Short Story Month 2011: The […]


Can Online Book Clubs Work?

by Charlotte Boulay

A couple of months ago there was an online kerfuffle after Bitch Magazine posted a list of 100 feminist YA books, and then removed three books from that list after a few commenters complained about them, for various reasons. Then other commenters cried censorship, including some other authors on the list who asked to be removed. You can read our original post about the melee here, and, should you dare, the 432 original comments here. To soothe and engage, Bitch decided to let readers vote on five books that would become an online YA book club. On the first Friday […]


Lisa Simpson's Book Club, Hamlet's iPod

by Celeste Ng

So they’re not real—but they appreciate pop culture. As a Simpsons geek, I was delighted to discover the Tumblr site Lisa Simpson’s Book Club, which is documenting all the works of literature referenced by the surprisingly literate second-grader on The Simpsons. The site features screengrabs of Lisa reading, along with quotes and comments about her reading material of choice—including both real books like Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and On the Road as well as spoofs like the How, Why, and Huh? Book of Weather and The Babysitter Twins. But then, The Simpsons has always […]


Last chance: BOMB's 2011 Fiction Contest—EXTENDED to April 25!

by Celeste Ng

Just a reminder: the deadline for BOMB Magazine‘s fifth Fiction Contest is tomorrow, April 16 deadline extended to April 25!. This year’s judge is Rivka Galchen, author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances. The winner will receive $500 and publication in First Proof, BOMB’s literary supplement. Full content details and submission instructions are here. And to learn more about the journal, check out BOMB’s website, back issues, and blog.


Motivation… for the Unmotivated

by Celeste Ng

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Easy for Mary Heaton Vorse to say, perhaps, but what if you need a little more help getting those two seats together? Writers, being creative people, come up with lots of creative ways to get motivated. Two friends of mine from grad school would get together for enforced writing time; if one of them didn’t write, she would be forced to donate money to a cause she loathed, like the NRA. I don’t know if either of them ever actually […]




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