Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

Fact Checking Fiction?

by Celeste Ng

Like many writers, I often get caught up in details. While working on my novel, I found myself checking the phases of the moon for a particular night, the temperature and weather for a particular day, whether Post-It Notes had been invented by 1977 (no), and when those annoying fasten-seat-belt warning lights became standard in cars (earlier than you’d think). Yes, fiction is made up—but sometimes, if I find myself setting an event in a particular place at a particular time, I feel obligated to get the facts right. Now the Canadian literary journal Taddle Creek is taking fact-checking to […]


Fighting (Writerly) Fatigue

by Celeste Ng

Maybe it’s summer—too sunny out to work inside!—or maybe it’s just the 80º+ weather in Boston, but I’ve been feeling a little… tired. Just in time, Paperback Writer has a post on how to combat fatigue—physical, mental, and, most importantly for writers, creative: Creating on demand, always being on, always being told we’re not good enough, we’re not successful enough, and we’re not doing enough. I’ve been working this gig for twelve years now and I can tell you this much: the pressure never ends. I understand the siren song of all the hype that’s attached to things like social […]


Dzanc Books Summer Sale

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

As FWR readers know, we’re big fans of the work that Dzanc Books does for the literary world. Not just in terms of publishing, but also education. In addition to the Dzanc Writer In Residence Program, which helps put writers into Michigan schools, and the Dzanc Prize, which gives money to writers to conduct writing workshops in places like VA hospitals, prisons, and in refugee communities, they also offer online tutoring and manuscript consultation through the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions. All of these are necessary and enriching programs, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to partner with […]


Inside Indie Bookstores: Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee

by Anne Stameshkin

The July/August issue of Poets & Writers hit the newsstands earlier this week, and among the current features is the latest installment of FWR Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin’s Inside Indie Bookstores series. Joining the ranks of previously featured stores like Square Books (Oxford, MS), Powell’s Books (Portland, OR), and Women & Children First (Chicago, IL) is Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI). Jeremiah spoke with Boswell owner Daniel Goldin–who worked as the book buyer for Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops for nearly two decades before that illustrious store went out of business in 2009–about why he chose to open his own shop […]


The Writer Who Forgot How to Read

by Celeste Ng

What happens to a writer who can no longer read? NPR’s Morning Edition presents this fascinating (true) story of Canadian novelist Howard Engel, who forgot how to read—literally—after suffering a stroke. Engel managed to teach himself to read again and shared his story with neuroscientist Oliver Sacks. When he looked at the front page — it was the Toronto Globe and Mail, an English-language journal — the print on the page was unlike anything he had seen before. It looked vaguely “Serbo-Croatian or Korean,” or some language he didn’t know. Wondering if this was some kind of joke, he went […]


What's that Sound?

by Charlotte Boulay

It turns out it’s difficult to find a novel in which the phrase “Somewhere a dog barked” or something similar does not appear, as novelist Rosencranz Baldwin reports in Slate: Having heard the dog’s call, it seemed like I couldn’t find a book without one. Not The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Not Shadow Country. Not Ulysses. Not Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men, or Monica Ali’s Alentejo Blue, or Stephen King’s It or Christine. Not Jodi Picoult’s House Rules. If novelists share anything, it’s a distant-dog impulse. Picture an author at work: She’s exhausted, gazing at her laptop and […]


More on the "Young" Writer

by Celeste Ng

The publication of the New Yorker‘s “20 Under 40” list caused quite a stir in the literary world recently. Partly, this was because such a list, issued with such authority from such an authority, raises particular expectations. But it was also partly because of the emphasis on “young” writers. In fact, as we previously mentioned, one blog, Ward Six, was so fed up with the “Under 40” list that it offered its own list of writers over 80. But in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus takes a different perspective, pointing out that “the emphasis on futurity […]


How to Cope with the Writing Life

by Celeste Ng

Author Hannah Moskovitz has a sweet little post on coping with the ins and outs of a daily writing life: Here’s what I’ve found keeps you from getting gnawed down to nothing with the jealousy, fear, and guilt that seems to go hand in hand with writing. Tell someone who isn’t a writer. When I was querying in high school, I had a few people ask me why the fuck I kept running to the computers like an addict between every class. So I explained querying to them, with a flow-chart. All paths lead to rejection–query, partial, full–except this one […]


20 Under 40, 10 Over 80, and 20 More Under 40 (40 Years Ago)

by Celeste Ng

Time for age-based writer lists! First up: The New Yorker names its list of “20 under 40” list of fiction writers worth watching. The last such list was compiled in 1999 and included Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, and David Foster Wallace; the current list includes Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Joshua Ferris, Salvatore Scibona, and Wells Tower, among many others. Yes, all of them were born in 1970 or later. If that bothers you, move on to list #2: Ward Six counters the New Yorker list with a list of “10 Great Writers Over 80,” praising John Barth, Beverly Cleary, Harper Lee, […]


Twitter-ary Analysis

by Celeste Ng

Still not convinced that “Twitterature” is an actual art form? TIME magazine’s James Poniewozik has put together the most compelling analysis of Twitterfiction I’ve seen yet: Like any other kind of literature, Twitter lit — or Twitterature, to borrow the title of a recent book that condensed literary classics into tweet form — has its strengths, rules and tropes. Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone. Halpern’s inaugural @shitmydadsays tweet is so economical that it should be taught in writing workshops: “‘I didn’t live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. […]


The Library of America's Story of the Week

by Celeste Ng

Each week, The nonprofit Library of America offers a free short story, readable online in PDF form. The current “Story of the Week” is “The Charmed Life”< by Katherine Anne Porter. Other recent features include “Charles” by Shirley Jackson (who—yes!—wrote more than just “The Lottery”), the early story “The Cut-Glass Bowl” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Wives of the Dead” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each story is also accompanied by some commentary that helps set the story in context. This seems like a great—and free—way to discover some lesser-known pieces by well-known American writers. See the current story and all […]


CLMP's 11th Annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend

by Anne Stameshkin

NYC-based readers: On June 19-20, check out the CLMP’s Lit Mag Marathon Weekend, an annual celebration, showcase, and discount extravaganza of literary magazines and journals. – Events kick off on Saturday at 4 PM with The Magathon at the New York Public Library (main branch: Fifth Ave @ 42nd Street). For 2.5 hours, a number of journal editors will present favorite selections from their latest issues. – Then on Sunday from noon to 5, get your discounted periodical fix at the 11th Annual Literary Magazine Fair (also known as the Giant Lit Mag Fair) at Housing Works Bookstore Café (126 […]




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