Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

Shop Talk |

a section of one's own?

by Anne Stameshkin

Earlier this week, a friend asked me what I thought about questions raised in this article about urban fiction. To sum up: libraries’ urban fiction (mostly African-American fiction) sections are growing, as are the numbers of enthusiastic black readers who borrow from them. Some writers and readers within the African-American community find the genre (also sometimes called street lit or black literature) “embarrassing” and feel that it perpetuates stereotypes. Others worry that segregating blacks to a specific section in the library or bookstore recalls uglier times and promotes the idea of separate cultures, separate literatures. But other writers, readers, and […]


Shop Talk |

the invisible library

by Anne Stameshkin

Visit The Invisible Library, where fictional books — those that exist only in fictional worlds — are chronicled. Can you think of a book not included here? If so, enter Book Maven’s Invislble Library Contest; the prize is a grab-bag of five real books.


Shop Talk |

the re-reading has begun

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR’s first “You’ve Got to Re-Read This” is up on our Reviews page. Charlotte Boulay tells us why the Moomin books, including Moominsummer Madness, fascinated her as a kid and why we should read them today. Writer-readers: Submissions (blog posts, essays, reviews, what-have-you) for this series remain open; send queries to fictionwritersreview@gmail.com.


Shop Talk |

It's 13 days til Halloween…

by Anne Stameshkin

I’d already planned to curl up with Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and get into the mood. And things, it appears, are getting better all the time. The author’s 9-city video tour concluded on October 9, and now, as I read, I can go here to watch and listen to Gaiman — in a fetching leather jacket, no less — read the entire book to me. To learn more about the much-acclaimed The Graveyard Book, listen to this episode of All Things Considered. The NPR page also features a review by Laurel Maury, some of the book’s haunting artwork, an […]


Shop Talk |

P&W's Agents and Editors series

by Anne Stameshkin

Over the past year, Grove/Atlantic editor (and friend of FWR) Jofie Ferrari-Adler has been conducting a series of wonderful, in-depth interviews for Poets & Writers magazine with prominent agents and editors. Jofie’s latest feature is a conversation with Chuck Adams of Algonquin, the estimable editor behind Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and more than 100 other bestsellers; he has seen Cher’s living room and edited Joseph Heller’s prose. Previous interviews in the P&W series highlight the careers of editor Janet Silver and agents Lynn Nesbit, Molly Friedrich, and Nat Sobel.


Shop Talk |

conversational reviews

by Anne Stameshkin

At FWR, we plan to experiment with different ways to conduct discussion, or conversational, reviews about books. For Lush Life, we tried the immediate (and often overlapping) method of a real-time IM conversation; for our December selection, How Fiction Works, we’re going to try a series of posts by various participants over the course of a week or two. Eventually I’d be interested in offering podcast discussions (like Slate‘s) or creating a message board format that treats all of the site’s readers as equal participants (as Book Balloon does). In the meantime, please enjoy this sampling of ensemble reviews from […]


Shop Talk |

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger wins Booker Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

The White Tiger is 33-year-old Adiga’s first book, and one judge praised it as “the perfect novel.” Plot summary from BBC: “…a tale of two Indias…the story of Balram, the son of a rickshaw puller in the heartlands, one of the ‘faceless’ poor left behind by the country’s recent economic boom. It charts his journey from working in a teashop to entrepreneurial success.” You can read a sample chapter here and an interview with the author on the Booker Prize website. Congratulations to Aravind Adiga, and to the shortlisted runner-ups: Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture), Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies), […]


Shop Talk |

November 15th: Dzanc Write-a-thon

by Anne Stameshkin

Hey, fiction writers! What are you doing on Saturday, November 15th? If you spend the day writing, you can help raise money for Dzanc, a unique non-profit independent press established (in their own words) “to not only publish great books, but to work nationally in set communities to provide writing workshops and year round programs for students and adults alike.” Read more about the Dzanc Writer in Residency Programs (DWIRPS) and The Dzanc Prize, two of many ways this press connects writing and publishing with community service and educational outreach. Want to read more about the event itself? Go here. […]


Shop Talk |

shout-out: Celeste Ng on Apostrophe Cast

by Anne Stameshkin

Apostrophe Cast, a bi-weekly online reading series, currently features work by FWR contributor Celeste Ng. Listen to Celeste read one of her fantastic short stories, “We Are Not Strangers.” Then read an off-beat interview with the author to find out why this one-time Best Easter Bonnet champion avoids hairless cats and wishes you’d call her Ish.




Literary Partners