Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

"This Book Made Me Want to Die"

by Celeste Ng

Here’s a great blog post from FWR favorite Aryn Kyle, on writing “happy literature”: “You should write something happy,” people tell me, and I don’t understand. Happy like Anna Karenina? Happy like The Grapes of Wrath? Happy like Lolita or Catch-22 or Revolutionary Road? Happy like Hamlet? What, I’d like to ask people, are these “happy books” you speak of, and who is writing them? I was an English Literature major, for sobbing out loud! I’ve never read a happy book in my whole life! Unless you count Jane Austen, who could usually be depended on to wrap things up […]


Is it better to burn out, or fade away?

by Celeste Ng

Would you rather have one smash hit, or a long series of good—if not mind-blowing—little hits? Robert McCrum asks that very question in The Observer: Original work is, by definition, exceptional. Often, it seems to come out of nowhere in a explosive flurry of excitement. Anglo-American and European literature is notable for its sprinters as well as its long-distance runners. There are so many brilliant one-offs, especially at the more popular end of the business: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, or Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, for example. Rosamond Lehmann had a long career, but most readers know […]


Literary Tees from Out-of-Print Clothing

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked about literary T-shirts on the blog before, but here’s another combination of bookishness and fashion—plus a dose of do-goodery. Out of Print Clothing has a twofold mission: 1. Provide awesome T-shirts based on iconic book covers. 2. Help those with little or no access to literature by donating books to Africa: one book per T-shirt sold. Says the company’s website: For each shirt we sell, one book is donated to a community in need through our partner Books For Africa. How we read is changing as we move further into the digital age. It’s unclear what the role […]


Big Think: Lionel Shriver on the "Unwholesome" Side of MFA Programs

by Celeste Ng

Should you get an MFA? On Big Think, novelist Lionel Shriver discusses the downsides of attending an MFA program: [It] does have a kind of indulgent, middle-class gestalt. The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers and therefore when I’ve been on the other side of it and occasionally taught creative writing, I felt a little bit guilty because so many of the people that you should be encouraging, because there’s no point to it if you’re not encouraging, are not going to make it. And I think that’s true […]


"…just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top."

by Celeste Ng

That’s what Gore Vidal had to say about John Updike in 2008. Think that’s bad? Examiner.com’s Michelle Kerns has compiled the 50 best author vs. author put-downs, and Vidal’s comment is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Nathaniel Hawthorne called Edward Bulwer-Lytton “the very pimple of the age’s humbug.” James Gould Cozzens declared, “I can’t read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.” Faulkner called Twain “a hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.” Read the rest at Examiner.com, and don’t miss Part 2, where Evelyn Waugh wonders if Proust was “mentally defective” and […]


Glass Wave: Lit-Inspired Music

by Celeste Ng

Ever wonder what happens when literary professors make music? Glass Wave is what happens. Composed of four literary scholars—Thomas Harrison of UCLA and Robert Pogue Harrison, Dan Edelstein, and Christy Wampole of Stanford—plus drummer Colin Camarillo, Glass Wave has just released its first, self-titled album, with songs based on canonical Western literature. Inside Higher Ed profiles the band and the album: The 11-track album adapts themes and narratives from Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vladimir Nabokov, and sets them to musical compositions, generally in the vein of 1960s and ’70s progressive rock typified by […]


So, What's Really Killing Fiction?

by Celeste Ng

You may have already seen this essay by Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, blaming too many MFA programs and their “navel-gazing” writers for the sorry state of fiction these days: But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism. Now, […]


Literary Action Figures

by Celeste Ng

I am secretly envious of Star Wars and Star Trek geeks, because they get to decorate their desks (and cubicles and shelves and windowsills) with action figures in heroic poses. It’s like saying to the world: I’m letting my geek flag fly. I also suspect that when no one is around, they play with the action figures. As a literary geek, though, I must make do with pithy quotes by E. L. Doctorow and the like. It’s just not the same. Apparently I am not alone. The Huffington Post alerted me to this video, which surfaced on YouTube recently and […]


The Envelopes Please…

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Congratulations to this year’s winners of The Collection Giveaway Project! Earlier today we held four separate drawings to determine the recipients of our free story collections, and here are the results: Shannon for Laura van den Berg’s collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Pete for Joshua Furst’s collection Short People Barrett Shipp for Skip Horack’s collection The Southern Cross Melanie Yarbrough for Robin Black’s collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Thanks also to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer (who first suggested the giveaway), the editors of The Replacement […]


Last Call: Win One of Eight Free Short Story Collections!

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

As the month winds to a close over Memorial Day weekend and summer officially begins, we’ll also be wrapping up our celebration of May as Short Story Month. Inspired by The Emerging Writers Network and their unparalleled coverage off all things story-related each May, as well as The Poetry Book Giveaway For National Poetry Month, we decided to launch The Collection Giveaway Project (warm thanks to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer for suggesting our site as a home for this promotion). The goal is a simple one: to get readers talking about their favorite stories and story collections. So […]


Much Better Than Setting Fires: Chuck Palahniuk at "The Muse and the Marketplace"

by Celeste Ng

Grub Street is an independent not-for-profit writing center in Boston that runs writing classes as well as an annual literary conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. At the most recent Muse, Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker, and even if you missed the conference, you can watch his speech below. Palahniuk tells the story of a very bad night in Paris on book tour and offers some possible metaphors for writing, as well as advice on eating cheese in France (!): Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo. You can also listen to last year’s keynote address (in MP3 format) […]


New Audio Lit Mag: The Drum

by Anne Stameshkin

The Drum is a new online literary magazine that bills itself as “a literary magazine for your ears.” Founded and edited by writer Henriette Lazaridis Power, The Drum features short fiction and essays, read aloud by the authors. According to the journal’s website, the goal is to provide literature in portable, sharable, audio form: Each of The Drum’s ten annual issues brings you new literature you can weave into your daily life. Listen online or download the audio to listen to on your mp3 player and/or to share with up to five friends. Use our tags to choose a story […]




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