Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Anne Stameshkin’

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Wag's Revue releases Issue 2

On June 25, Wag’s Revue–a free, online-only literary quarterly–followed their exciting (and much-discussed) first issue with their second, which looks very promising. So why is this lit mag different from all other lit mags? In the words of Sandra Allen, the journal’s nonfiction editor, Wag’s Revue “aspires to marry the freedoms of the Internet with the strictures of a traditional printed quarterly, creating something entirely new (a ‘wag,’ if you will). It’s an exciting solution, I think, to print’s demise, and a good read for anyone interested in the future of the American literary quarterly.” From the press release: Faithful […]


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new on FWR

Blog readers, check out our latest features on the main site: [review] Sophie Powell recommends the Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (edited by Tara L. Masih), “an unprecedented gathering of 25 brief essays by experts in the field that includes a lively, comprehensive history of the hybrid genre.” [essay] – Laura Valeri engages with and rebuts the notion that fiction writers are “failed poets.” [interview] – Mary Westbrook talks with award-winning author Janet Peery about the particular process of expanding stories into novels, what being a “writer’s writer” really means, how she’d respond if a student […]


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I wrote the news today, oh boy

On June 10, for one day only, Haaretz replaced its reporters with 31 of Israel’s literary writers, instructing them to cover the news. The result? Top stories about “integration at the giraffe enclosure, love in the cancer ward, mosaics in Tel Aviv, addicts at the Jerusalem rehab centre, and a visit to the grave of a holy man, among others” (via Metafilter). The Jewish Daily Forward‘s David Estrin describes the experiment: Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: “Everything’s okay. Everything’s like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything’s okay. The […]


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Fiction Writers Review 2.0

Dear readers: FWR will be under construction this weekend (thanks to the amazing and talented Marissa), so apologies in advance if you check in on Saturday or Sunday and find (1) severe wonkiness or (2) nothing at all. Come Monday we’ll be updated, and we’ll have some awesome new features as well. Stay tuned!!


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P&W's Agents and Editors Series: Jonathan Galassi

Jofie Ferrari-Adler continues his must-read Agents and Editors series for Poets and Writers with this great in-depth interview with Jonathan Galassi, the president/publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Here’s a brief excerpt: [Jofie Ferrari-Adler:] What else are you looking for when you’re evaluating a piece of fiction? Are you looking for a certain kind of sensibility or anything like that? [Jonathan Galassi:] I think that would fall under voice. I remember when I read [Roberto] Bolaño’s Savage Detectives. I read an Italian version and just thought it had so much verve and humor. It was so sexy. It had a […]


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RopeWalk Writers Retreat

Benjamin Percy writes to FWR about RopeWalk, where he taught earlier this month: Historic New Harmony, Indiana, was the site of two nineteenth century utopian experiments, and in the same spirit, the The RopeWalk Writers Retreat offers up a small slice of heaven. Here, a competitively chosen pool of students study for a week under four prominent writers (faculty over the past few years include Andrew Hudgins, Erin McGraw, Sigrid Nunez, Lee Martin, Marianne Boruch, Kyoko Mori, among others). There are workshops and panels and readings and one-on-one conferences — the standard fare — but unlike other conferences, no one […]


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summer reading by (and recommended by) Alan Cheuse

NPR’s “Voice of Books” has a new book of his own, a collection of travel essays called A Trance After Breakfast. New Yorkers, come hear him read from it on Monday, June 22, at 7 PM at McNally Jackson (52 Prince St.)–and check out FWR’s interview with the author following the publication of his most recent novel, 2008’s To Catch the Lightning. Via NPR, don’t miss Alan Cheuse’s list of carefully chosen (and enthusiastically recommended) books you should read this summer, complete with compelling reviewlets and links to excerpts. If only all reviewers *loved* books the way Cheuse obviously does!


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"I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy."

In a single day — June 16, 1904 — Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus walked the streets of Dublin and the pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Today in cities across the globe, fans of the novel are celebrating with races, walking tours, pub crawls, readings, and performances. If you’re in Dublin itself, events began on June 13 and culminate today with a walking tour, Bloomsday breakfasts at the James Joyce Centre, readings and songs in Meetinghouse Square, and a screening of John Huston’s The Dead at the Irish Film Institute. New Yorkers, if you haven’t experienced Bloomsday on Broadway (at […]