Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Thursday morning candy: Tin House

by Lee Thomas

The founders of Tin House – magazine, book publisher, workshop destination – put their mission best, so I won’t try to improve upon it: The first issue of Tin House magazine arrived in the spring of 1999, the singular lovechild of an eclectic literary journal and a beautiful glossy magazine. Publisher Win McCormack said of the effort, “I wanted to create a literary magazine for the many passionate readers who are not necessarily literary academics or publishing professionals.” From their latest issue (pictured above), which fills me with a tinge of nostalgia (did anyone else think of Jan Brett’s wonderfully […]


Literature Maps

The following guest post is by Emily VanDusen, an FWR intern and first-year student at the University of Michigan. As a student, a writer, a reader, and simply a person, I have made many a concept map in my day, whether in writing or in my imagination. The organization of interrelated thoughts takes many forms, but few are as straightforward and yet complex as the “literature maps” offered by Gnooks.com. All you have to do to see the connections and proximity of one author’s “relationship” to another is type in a name and watch the screen bloom. What’s cool is […]


Book of the Week: Sarah/Sara, by Jacob Paul

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 Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Sarah Comer, Maggie Bertucci Hamper, and Kendra Langford Shaw. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Jacob Paul’s Sarah/Sara. The author, who is an Associate Professor at Utah State, where he recently received his PhD, was formerly in the finance industry. On the morning of September 11th of 2001, he was in Tower […]


Come see us at AWP!

by Lee Thomas

It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since last spring’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference, which took place in Denver. But the 2011 AWP conference is already around the corner! This year’s four-day event will be held in Washington D.C. from Wednesday, February 2 – Saturday, February 5. And, as always, Fiction Writers Review will be there. This year we’re at Table B-18 in the bookfair. So please come see us. We’ll also be busy with plenty of events. Our Editor, Jeremiah Chamberlin will be moderating a panel on criticism, we’ll have two […]


Recently on FWR…

by Anne Stameshkin

Hello, blog readers! In case you’ve missed any of FWR’s features so far in 2011, here’s a quick recap, complete with tasty excerpts: – In her interview with novelist Tracy Chevalier (Remarkable Creatures, Girl with a Pearl Earring), Felicity Librie uncovers how research fuels the process of character development, how the past sheds light on our present moment, and why Chevalier will never tire of getting lost on a journey of discovery. TRACY CHAVALIER: I put the story first, and the characters. The history always has to be secondary. I don’t want to be a teacher, I want to be […]


You want a place where everybody knows … your reading list

by Lee Thomas

In a bit of Whisper-Down-The-Lane, this came to me from FWR’s own Michael Rudin, who got it from Matt Bell, who mentions Aaron Burch in his original post. Whew! But this trailer for Portlandia (a new show debuting on IFC tonight, which apparently is now up on Hulu – thanks again Matt) is too hilarious not to share with the seven people who have yet to experience that pang of recognition, only to succumb to the hilarity of it all. May your weekend hold all the I’ve-read-everything-you-have conversations your heart desires. I secretly cherish the old “Lord Jim?” “Yes, I […]


Thursday morning candy: Ploughshares

by Lee Thomas

In a landscape crowded with brand-new literary mags – which are always exciting to FWR – we want to give a shout out to an old stalwart: Ploughshares. Started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, Ploughshares has called Emerson College home for the past two decades. Several Fiction Writers Review contributors have had work appear in the magazine, including Valerie Laken and brand new Contributing Editor Travis Holland. One of my favorite aspects of Ploughshares is that every issue is edited by a different guest editor, who shapes the theme and selects pieces with his or her own particular aesthetic. Past […]


Haiti: Remembering Her Stories

by Lee Thomas

Jaunary 12, 2011 marked the 1-year anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti. The news this past week has been filled with scenes of the temporary camps set up to house the one million Haitians left homeless by the quake – largely unchanged a year later. Just yesterday, police arrested Jean-Claude Duvalier – the controversial Haitian politician who fled Haiti in 1986 – from a Port-Au-Prince hotel. Duvalier has lived in self-imposed exile for nearly a quarter century, after a popular uprising overthrew his regime. Haitian Literature Is a Living Art: Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour and Thomas […]


Book of the Week: Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, by Ben Spivey

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 Charles Baxter’s Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Jen Michaels, Rob Schmitt, and Matt Bell. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed, first-edition of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Ben Spivey’s novel Flowing in the Gossamer Fold. Spivey is the co-founder with David Peak of Blue Square Press. In fact, this book is the Press’s first publication. In his October review of the book for The Collagist, J.A. […]


Selected

by Travis Holland

How often does it happen? Once or twice, maybe? You’re in a bookstore, you’re at the library, drifting among the stacks, your eye glazed over not with boredom but indecision, because you simply cannot decide what it is you want to read next. Reading something next, that’s the easy part, particularly if you’re one of those readers for whom the prospect of not reading something, anything, is just, well, unthinkable. You read one book or one story, and when you’ve finished that, you read another. It’s like breathing in a way, one breath and then another, and another. But on […]


Introducing: Flipbooks

by Lee Thomas

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to inspire, encourage, and challenge our fellow readers and writers. During the past two and a half years, we’ve featured more than 50 interviews with authors established and emerging. And 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 writing community. So we’re pleased to announce the Fiction Writers Review “Flipbook.” Flipbooks debut today on the FWR Facebook page. Every few weeks we’ll post a […]


Let's get digital

by Lee Thomas

This post stems from a conversation with my brother – who recently moved to Chile – about what he’d loaded onto his Kindle. As a recent college grad, with limited disposable income, he was pretty stringent in choosing the books he bought. But he’s a voracious reader. His solution: he loaded up his e-reader with a clutch of classics that have entered the public domain. Let them read (old) books! Though beautiful books draw my eye, the trump card for me will always be the words on the page. I love books for the story, which means I keep reading […]




Literary Partners