Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

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Preeta Samarasan on Commonwealth shortlist!

The 2009 South East Asia and Pacific regional short lists for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize have been announced, and FWR contributor Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day made the cut for Best First Book. Congratulations, Preeta!! Here are the short lists: Best Book Aravind Adiga, Between The Assassinations Helen Garner, The Spare Room Joan London, The Good Parents Paula Morris, Forbidden Cities Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap Tim Winton, Breath Best First Book Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger Nam Le, The Boat Mo Zhi Hong, The Year of The Shanghai Shark Bridget van der Zijpp, Misconduct Preeta Samarasan, Evening is […]


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short story bubble?

On the Virginia Quarterly Review blog, Michael Lukas worries that AWP’s heightened emphasis on the short story is a contributing factor to what he calls the “Short Story Bubble”–and its eventual burst. I’m not sure I entirely buy his argument, but hey, it’s worth discussing… All around the country, thousands of young fiction writers are scribbling furiously, focusing their creative and psychological energies on producing and publishing short stories, not necessarily because the short story is their favorite form. But, rather, because it’s the form best suited to the workshop, because they think it’s the easiest way to get published, […]


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Shivani Manghnani wins AAWW/Hyphen contest

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Hyphen announced today that Shivani Manghnani‘s “Playing the Sheik” has won their 2008 Short Story Contest. The story will appear this April in Hyphen‘s Issue 17. Among the finalists is FWR contributor Celeste Ng, for her story “Girls, At Play.” Congrats to Shivani, and to Celeste and the other finalists! The AAWW is currently selling raffle tickets ($20 apiece) to raise money for the Workshop and support Asian American literature. The prize, should you wish to enter, is this rather fetching Vespa.


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20 years ago, McEwan offered Rushdie safe haven

Two decades after the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie, it’s been revealed that Ian McEwan offered the author a place to hide — a cottage in the Cotswolds — and joined him there for some time. From the Guardian: This intimate detail is contained in a long profile of McEwan published in next week’s issue of the New Yorker. Written by an editor at the magazine, Daniel Zalewski, it explores McEwan’s growing commitment to science and rationality as a factor, alongside the Rushdie affair, behind the controversy over Islamic fundamentalism in which he later became embroiled. The Cotswold encounter […]


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After AWP

It’s a sunny Sunday morning when we wake and ready ourselves to depart Chicago. Gazing out the the window of our room on the 23rd floor of the Hilton, I can see a host of over-sized snow sculptures across the street in Grant Park—enormous frogs kissing, a six-foot tall hamburger, a gigantic head of Einstein, and an anatomically correct heart the size of a Volkswagen that is now broken in pieces, presumably after a bad Valentine’s Day last night. Beyond the park, stretching toward the horizon line, Lake Michigan is the color of blued, tin siding. It might be sunny, […]


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February/March preview and call for submissions

write for us… Fiction Writers Review is seeking to grow our community of contributors. If you’re interested in writing a review, essay, or interview for us, check out our updated submissions guidelines. coming soon… Over the next few weeks, we’ll publish reviews of the following books (and more): Novels The Mayor’s Tongue by Nathaniel Rich, Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, Beijing Coma by Ma Jiang, and The Women by T.S. Boyle Story collections In the Convent of Little Flowers by Indu Sundaresan and Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff Biography Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis We’ll also offer some […]


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"what they need is a damn good reading"

“Books were once subversive things, causing revolutions, and stimulating unimagined sexual awakenings…These days, opening a book – any book – is seen as nothing more than part of good citizenship, and something that might just help you on the path to prosperity to boot.” Alastair Harper gets satirical on the Guardian Books Blog, raising questions about indiscriminate reading and experiments like OUP’s Project X: There is a presumption that if the worst, most delinquent tearaways would just put down their machetes for a moment and sit down to read a good book, they would instantly see the merit in a […]




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