The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women, edited by Rosalie Morales Kearns
by Ellen Prentiss Campbell
Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviews the most recent release from feminist press Shade Mountain Press.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviews the most recent release from feminist press Shade Mountain Press.
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. First, W.W. Norton is releasing what strikes me as a must-read anthology for fiction writers: Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. Edited by David Shields and Matthew […]
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. I can’t say I wasn’t warned that Chad Simpson’s essay, “An Epilogue to the Unread”—which connects the illness and passing of Simpson’s mother, her love for reading, examples of generosity in our […]
This week’s featured title is Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, edited by Richard Ford. This anthology was created as a benefit for 826michigan, a non-profit organization located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. They offer drop-in tutoring, writing workshops, storytelling and bookmaking field trips, nighttime and weekend workshops, and various other community-related events and services. All are free of charge, always. Founded by Ann Arbor writer Steven Gillis, 826michigan is a chapter […]
Editor’s note: As part of our continuing celebration of Short Story Month, we’re delighted to present a guest post by Laura Furman, editor of the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Each year, I choose the twenty stories to be included in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Once I’ve gathered them in a manuscript without attribution of authorship or publication, I send the stories to the three jurors of the year. They in turn read them and, without consulting either me or each other, pick an individual favorite and write about it. The emphasis in this part of the book’s life is […]
Most of the news lately is about print publishers moving to electronic publishing. So it’s refreshing to hear about the opposite: short story website Five Chapters will soon begin publishing print books. In January 2011, Five Chapters will publish three short story collections by Five Chapters alums: Nobody Ever Gets Lost by Jess Row, Other People We Married by Emma Straub, and “an anthology of stories which have been published on FC over the last four years.” Five Chapters founder David Daley shared the news with Mediabistro’s Morning Media Menu. Click here to listen to the interview with Daley, and […]
What is it about the European cultures, tucked like bats into their tiny cubbies, that seems so much more specific than our own? How do Belgium or Luxembourg achieve “culture” in little more space we might use to construct a Wal-Mart megastore? What is it about confinement that breeds a more tribal than national identity? What are we doing when we sit down to read a collection of fiction culled from a continent?
It’s with great pride that we announce that Christine Hartzler’s essay “Games Are Not About Monsters,” which FWR published in April of last year, was recently selected for inclusion in Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010 anthology. Christine’s essay is a lyrical meditation on video games, the development of character, how we make meaning, and, of course, monsters. Drawing from her own experience playing RPGs like Shadow of the Colossus, she asks us to consider how the best games in this genre–like the best literature–not only challenge us to confront ourselves, but can also give us a glimpse of enlightenment. […]
Even the idea itself is intriguing: pair twelve international illustrators and short fiction writers, press go, see what happens. The slim, wonderfully designed collection We Are the Friction sets the stage for unexpected relationships. Following their 2008 collaboration, I Am the Friction, the masterminds behind the concept are designer Jez Burrows and illustrator Lizzy Stewart, who together form Sing Statistics. Both Burrows and Stewart are based in Edinburgh, but the two-dozen writers and illustrators in this anthology reside across the globe – from Toronto to Kansas City to Barcelona. The cover promises a veritable garden of earthly delights: “5 Giant Animals, 63 Expletives, 6 Instances of the Ocean,” and “1 Sentient Muffin” among them. Let’s begin with that muffin.
The Millions pointed us to this interesting analysis of the Best American Short Stories series from the blog Years of BASS. Jake, the brain behind Years of BASS, has read all of the collections since the 1978 edition and compiled some statistics. C. Max Magee (of The Millions) reports: Interestingly, Alice Munro, though Canadian, has made the most BASS appearances over the last 30 years by a wide margin with 18 appearances. After her come some more of the leading lights of short fiction: Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike with nine stories each; Mavis Gallant (another Canadian) with eight; […]
