Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

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Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions (deadline: August 15, 2009)

by Anne Stameshkin

Via Matthew Hittinger, here is a call for submissions from The Writer’s Center just outside D.C. (in Bethesda, MD). Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The Writer’s Center, metropolitan DC’s community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships. Emerging Writer Fellows will be selected from applicants who have published up to 2 book-length works of prose and up to 3 book-length works of poetry. We welcome submissions from writers of any genre, background, or experience. Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer’s Center as part of […]


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nothing new under the sun…

by Anne Stameshkin

And this article, in fact, is 1.5 years old. But here are what Bob Harris (via the NY Times‘s “Paper Cuts” blog) names the “seven deadly words of book reviewing,” worn expressions to avoid if you want that novel you’re reviewing to sound remotely fresh. Briefly, they are: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft (verb), muse (verb), lyrical; read the whole entry for Harris’s compelling case against each. (Oops.) I’ll happily give the rest up…but can I keep lyrical? And don’t miss the readers’ comments; some of my favorites include: The “much-anticipated debut.” By whom? The author’s landlord? “that said” makes […]


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Call for submissions from Waccamaw

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Back in May we announced the launch of Waccamaw’s Spring 2009 issue as one of our recommended lit journals. Starting today, this award-winning publication out of Coastal Carolina University will begin their summer reading period for unsolicited work. From July 15 – August 31, Waccamaw will accept unsolicited submissions of poems, stories, and essays via their online Submission Manager system. Authors should limit submissions to 3-5 poems, one story, or one essay. They request only one submission in a single genre per reading period, and do not consider submissions of previously published work in any form (including prior internet publication). […]


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The Status Galleys Book Club

by Anne Stameshkin

In the New York Observer, Leon Neyfakh recently named this summer’s “status galleys,” the ones you get pick-up lines and publishing cred for reading on the subway. And over at Neyfakh’s former home, Gawker‘s Foster Kamer sprays the mystique off one of them, Joshua Ferris‘s The Unnamed (due to publish in January 2010), in this first installment of the Status Galley Book Club. He gives the novel a very positive review, but notes that the mainstream buzz anticipating its publication is too loud (and its galleys too widely distributed) for its status to be Truly Hip. Silly as it may […]


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summer reading

by Anne Stameshkin

The Guardian, true to its list-loving proclivities, offers “Text on the Beach,” the 50 “best summer reads” of all time. Which ones did they miss? I’d add The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Michael Chabon) and Sag Harbor (Colson Whitehead). Or Goodbye, Columbus (Philip Roth), paired with essays by Mary McCarthy. For a real scorcher? Dante’s Inferno.


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novel excerpts: Lorrie Moore and Jonathan Lethem

by Anne Stameshkin

This week’s New Yorker features an excerpt (titled “Childcare”) from Lorrie Moore’s long-awaited new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, coming this September from Knopf. I agree with The Millions, however, that novel excerpts can be hazardous to your reading health–and having read the ARC, I must say this particular morsel doesn’t stand alone as a story or represent the fabulous feast it comes from. So if you can restrain yourself, wait until this book is out and read the whole thing. And in case you missed it, the November 4, 2008 issue featured an excerpt (titled “Lostronaut”) from what […]


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new review on FWR: Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

by Phil Sandick

So you boys are on a quest. That’s good, real good. You’ve got to have quests. The world has too few quests these days. We could all get off our asses and quest about some more. — from Couch Benjamin Parzybok’s unique debut novel combines the mundane with the epic: in the process of moving an old orange couch across town, three young men embark upon a quest to save the world. Read Phil Sandick’s review of Couch here.




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