Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Got 10 Minutes? Save Publishing!

by Celeste Ng

Supply and demand is the basic rule of economics. But will it work for books? Author Sean Cummings thinks so. He’s created a Facebook group and an accompanying website called “Save Publishing! Read a Book at Bedtime.” The site’s rationale: Read what you like. A magazine, a newspaper or a book. Read it in print or on an eBook reader or an iPad – whatever. Just ten minutes a night, a tiny commitment but an important one. If enough people will commit to reading at bedtime for ten minutes, they’ll eventually finish the books they’re reading. If they continue to […]


Good Sex Awards (NSFW)

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps you’ve enjoyed the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Awards in the past. This year, Salon inaugurated its first annual Good Sex Award, intended to “reward the best-written, most interesting and most convincing piece of sex writing published in a novel in 2010.” The winner, announced today, is James Hynes’s Next. Here’s an excerpt: Then Lynda murmurs “Wait” right in his ear, and as he clutches her waist under her dress she unbends first one leg and then the other over the railing, settling tightly against him, taking him in even deeper. She tightens her calves against the railing and squeezes […]


Flipbook: "Inspiration"

by Lee Thomas

Every few weeks, we launch a new Fiction Writers Review “Flipbook.” During the past two and a half years, we’ve featured more than 50 interviews with authors established and emerging. They’ve had such valuable insights into the writing life – from thoughts on process and craft to ideas about community and influence – that we wanted to find a way to further these conversations within our community. Each Flipbook highlights some of the very best of the conversations on our site, centered around a particular topic. Our latest Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive […]


Deadline for Dzanc Prize Extended

by Celeste Ng

The deadline for the Dzanc Prize has been extended to March 1, 2011. This is a great opportunity for an emerging writer interested in community service. From the Dzanc website: In 2007, to further its mission of fostering literary excellence, community involvement, and education, Dzanc Books created the Dzanc Prize, which provides monetary aid in the sum of $5,000, to a writer of literary fiction. All writers applying for the Dzanc Prize must have a work-in-progress they can submit for review, and present the judges with a Community Service Program they can facilitate somewhere in the United States. Such programs […]


Reminder: Sozopol Fiction Seminar Deadline February 15th

by The Editors

Each year the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation selects five native English speaking (NES) writers and five Bulgarian writers to participate in the Sozopol Fiction Seminar, which takes places in the tiny, historic town of Sozopol, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea. In 2009 I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the NES fellows. Joining me were Kodi Scheer, Lana Santoni, Maya Sloan, and now contributing editor Steven Wingate. For one week we lived together, shared meals together, discussed writing together, and discovered the odd similarities in our work and our lives. It was, in a word, amazing. And now […]


What's the most literate city in the U.S.?

by Celeste Ng

According to the latest study by Central Connecticut State University, Washington, D.C., is the nation’s most literate city. USA Today reports: The study examines not whether people can read, but whether they actually do. […] The study, based on 2010, looks at measures for six items — newspapers, bookstores, magazines, education, libraries and the Internet — to determine what resources are available in each city and the extent to which its inhabitants take advantage of them. Seattle fell from #1 last year to #2, while Minneapolis—another perennial contender for the top spot—took the bronze. Interestingly, some smaller cities like Cleveland, […]


Thursday Morning Candy: Fogged Clarity

by Celeste Ng

Founded in 2009, Fogged Clarity is an online, non-profit arts review that incorporates visual art and music in addition to fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, reviews, and original multimedia content. The “Fogged Clarity Sessions,” for instance, feature musicians visiting the studio to record several tracks, mostly acoustic. Writes executive editor Ben Evans: I have always believed that the most important thing a human being can do is create, and if creation is the whispering of personal truths into the commotion of existence, then I established Fogged Clarity to make those whispers a little more audible. The combination of visual art, music, […]


Gender Disparities in Reviewing (and Essaying, and Interviewing)

by Celeste Ng

Recently, I wrote about literary cameos on The Simpsons. In response, Charlotte wondered, “Are they tweaking on the Franzen gender controversy by only having literary cameos by men?” This is a timely question. A recent study by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts showing that male writers vastly outnumber female writers at many major literary magazines—as writers, reviewers, and review subjects. The New Republic, startled by this disparity, did some number-crunching and found that publishers also publish fewer books by women than men: In fact, these numbers we found show that the magazines are reviewing female authors in something close to […]


Baudelaire, $2.45?

by Celeste Ng

I really like vending machines. There’s something very cool about peering through the glass and scoping out what’s there, putting in your money and typing in the right code, then watching your treat slowly tumble down into the chute. I also enjoy seeing what weird things people decide to sell via machine. while ago, to my great delight, I spotted an iPod vending machine at Logan Airport. A mall near me has a ProActiv vending machine—for those times when you must treat your acne on the go, I guess. Now Polk County, Florida, has introduced a vending machine I’d love […]


Book of the Week: The Terror of Living, by Urban Waite

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Erika Dreifus’s story collection Quiet Americans, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Steve Woodward, Marianna Taylor, and NancyKay Shapiro. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this new collection. This week we’re featuring Urban Waite’s The Terror of Living. Waite grew up in Seattle and studied writing at Western Washington University and Emerson College. His short fiction has appeared in such places as The Best of the West Anthology, The Southern Review, Gulf […]


Better Book Titles

by Celeste Ng

Titles are many a writer’s Achilles heel. Even the greats had trouble—F. Scott Fitzgerald, for one, originally considered several alternative titles for The Great Gatsby, including Trimalchio in West Egg and The High-Bouncing Lover. (Yikes.) Each weekday, Dan Wilbur’s blog Better Book Titles features one book, retitled more honestly—and hilariously. Some of my favorites: Cynical? A little, but many of the Better Book Titles strike right to the heart of a book’s theme. Like this one: Visit the blog here, and don’t miss the archive.


Don't just Bitch, join the conversation

by Charlotte Boulay

Recently Bitch Magazine published a list, “100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader,” and it includes a lot of great titles I was happy to be reminded of, including classics like A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and The Golden Compass, as well as novels by Ursula LeGuin, Judy Blume, Cynthia Voigt, and other very contemporary selections like The Hunger Games and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies. I was surprised by the number of books on the list I hadn’t read, including three titles (Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, and Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth […]




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