Where the Official Record Ends: An Interview with Vanessa Hua
by Carolyn Gan
Carolyn Gan talks with Vanessa Hua about her debut novel, the importance of community, and the impact of becoming a parent on her writing.
Carolyn Gan talks with Vanessa Hua about her debut novel, the importance of community, and the impact of becoming a parent on her writing.
“Family, loyalty, love, lust: Vanessa Hua does justice to the big themes in this noteworthy debut.”
Shortlisted for the Booker, Tan’s novel pits Japanese atrocities in Malaya against an enduring love of their gardens.
Yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a garment that straddled the line between shorts and panties. Her outfit was revealing, and it made me ask questions like, “how far will fashion go?” and “what was she thinking?” Perhaps author Steven Millhauser had a similar experience at some point, and that led him to write “A Change of Fashion,” a short story that originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine, May 2006. What would happen if next season’s fashions did not favor a slightly shorter hemline or a higher heel, but hiddenness? What if dresses took on shapes larger than Victorian hoop skirts […]
Last week we featured Lapham’s Quarterly as our Journal-of-the-Week, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: William Walsh (@Questionstruck) tfullard (@tfullard) Ms. Understood (@MartyChev) Congrats! To claim your free issue, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us! Thanks to all of you who are fans. We appreciate your support. Let us know your favorite new books and journals out there! Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the prizes as subscriptions, not issues. We apologize for the error!
Our latest Journal of the Week, Lapham’s Quarterly, is a true curator of culture. By juxtaposing the old and the new, Carolyn Gan says in this profile, it’s the “literary equivalent of a really good mix tape, where obscure songs of various styles come together to tell you something more about the music.”
Reed, published at San Jose State University, is proud to reinvent itself regularly–that’s one of the ways it keeps itself current. Learn more about the journal, its history, and its ever-evolving tastes in our latest Journal of the Week feature.
Brooklyn-based Slice, our latest Journal of the Week, features work by new writers next to interviews by legendary authors–and proves you can be a successful literary magazine without kicking the competition.
Sometimes the best things in life come in small packages: Cadbury Creme Eggs, bonsais, the poetry of Kay Ryan. The same is often true of fiction, where in a few thousand words a great short story can convey emotional intensity in a way that a longer piece sometimes cannot.
I recently moved back to Los Angeles after many, many years away. Having left soon after my high school graduation for places beyond, I am pretty much a newcomer to my own hometown. More than once, I’ve thought I was lost only to come across something startlingly familiar: a beloved restaurant, an old friend’s driveway, the cemetery where my grandmother was buried. Lucky for me, one of the first boxes I unpacked included the Spring 2010 issue of Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Founded in 1993 at Iowa State University by Stephen Pett, Flyway showcases writing that considers how […]
