Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

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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 […]


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the controversy in the rye

by Celeste Ng

Remember Holden Caulfield? Young, angst-ridden, wandering the streets of New York? In the novel 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, by Fredrik Colting, Holden is seventy-six-year-old “Mr. C,” still angst-ridden and wandering the streets once more. Holden’s sister Phoebe and prep-school roommate Stradlater also make appearances. But does Colting have the right to use these characters–and a fictionalized version of J.D. Salinger himself–in his own work? We’ll see. Salinger is suing Colting, claiming that 60 Years Later is “a rip-off pure and simple.” Colting and his lawyers insists the novel is neither plagiarism nor a sequel to Catcher in […]


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Book Blog Tour: Pamela Ehrenberg visits FWR

Pamela Ehrenberg is the author of a new YA novel, Tillmon County Fire, which has just been released from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Eerdmans also published her first book, Ethan, Suspended, in 2007. Pam and I have been members of a six- or seven-person writing group since 2004. She has an amazing ability to make characters come alive, a natural instinct for the puzzle of a story, and also a tremendous sense of dedication and productivity that existed long before she had a book contract. She’s also one of the kindest people I know, and it shows in her […]


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four ways of looking at a novel

To answer the personal question “Do I love books, or do I love reading?” — and the larger question “In which format(s) is the book most likely to endure?” — author Ann Kirschner (Sala’s Gift) tried Dickens’s Little Dorrit in four formats: paperback, audio, iPhone, and Kindle. She discusses her impressions of each in this Chronicle of Higher Education article. Among them: the particular pleasures of audio books, why the iPhone e-reader is “a Kindle killer,” and the power of story to transcend any device. Read Little Dorrit in paperback. Listen to Little Dorrit as an audio book Read Little […]


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new lit journal from Dzanc

Dzanc Books announced yesterday that they are launching a monthly online literary journal, The Collagist, which will feature stories, poems, essays, and book reviews; the first issue will publish on August 15. Each month The Collagist will deliver outstanding new short stories, poems, and essays from both emerging and established writers, as well as an exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming novel. Early excerpts will include works from the standard bearers of independent publishing, including Coffee House, Two Dollar Radio, and Unbridled Books. The Collagist will also publish several new book reviews in every issue. The Collagist is immediately open for […]


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new review on FWR: The Moon in Deep Winter by Lee Polevoi

by Tyler McMahon

Click here to read Tyler McMahon’s review in full. Here’s a taste: Like a cold, northeastern version of Thomas McGuane’s 92 in the Shade, Lee Polevoi’s impressive debut novel, The Moon in Deep Winter, is the story of a misguided homecoming gone wrong. After years spent as a bit player on the margins of Southern California’s criminal underworld, Parker returns to his rural New England town, hoping to reconcile differences with his mother, his younger half-siblings, and his dictatorial step-father. He soon finds that his family secrets run even deeper and darker than he thought.




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