Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘contest’

Reviews |

The Collectors, by Matt Bell

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

In both of the recent New York Times reviews of E.L. Doctorow’s new novel, Homer & Langley, which is based on the lives of the Collyer brothers, the reviewers go out of their way to point to other works drawn from the lives of these eccentric, hoarding bachelor shut-ins: Marcia Davenport’s My Brother’s Keeper, Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle, Franz Lidz’s Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers and My Uncle Arthur, New York’s Greatest Hoarders, and a variety of other books, films, plays, and TV shows. In short: we are obsessed with the obsessed. Nowhere is this clearer than in Matt Bell’s The Collectors, which is also based on the lives of the Collyer brothers, and deserves to be added to this canon.


Shop Talk |

Sirenland 2010: workshop your writing in Italy

by Anne Stameshkin

So…who wants to spend a week with One Story magazine at this hotel in Positano, Italy, engaging in a series of advanced fiction- and memoir-writing workshops with Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, and Ron Carlson; giving and attending readings; and dining with a view of the Tirreno Sea? Submissions are open from now through October 31 for the third annual Sirenland Writers Conference (March 21-27, 2010). As someone lucky enough to have been workshopped by Shepard once, I urge other writers to jump at any chance to discuss work with him! Visit the Sirenland website to learn more about the conference […]


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The Great Geek Giveaway Contest

by Anne Stameshkin

On Monday, FWR will publish Sophie Powell’s review of Ethan Gilsdorf‘s memoir-adventure hybrid Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. In the meantime, this contest on the author’s website sounds fun. Click on that link for all the details, but here’s a snippet: What is your geekiest secret? Your freakiest fandom moment? Your most embarrassing gaming gaffe? In a brief essay, photo or video, we want you to spill the beans. The folks at Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks Headquarters want to know about that time you stalked your favorite Star Trek celebrity to a coffee shop, made a pilgrimage to a […]


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Jeffrey E. Smith Editor's Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

The Missouri Review‘s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize Three winners, one per genre (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) will each receive $5,000 and publication in the journal. Finalists will receive $100 and be considered for publication. Submission info: You can enter online or by mail. There is a fee of $20 per submission, but this includes a one-year subscription to the journal, and entrants can choose between the print edition or the new digital format; the latter offers additional audio content and leaves a smaller carbon footprint. Submissions should be no longer than 25 pages of poetry or prose. Deadline: October […]


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NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest

by Anne Stameshkin

The flash-fiction / short-short-short trend continues… For Round II of this contest, NPR invites writers to submit an original work that begins with this sentence: “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Instructions, via the site: One entry per person, and no more than 600 words, please. Stories must be received by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25. We’ll post a favorite story weekly until the New Yorker‘s James Wood picks our winner and reads his or her story on the air. The winner will also receive a signed copy of Wood’s book, How Fiction Works. (And if you […]


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Short Story Special

by Celeste Ng

The Guardian has put out its annual Short Story Special, featuring work by Dave Eggers, A.M. Homes, David Mitchell, William Boyd, and Julie Myerson. This year, the Special also includes six short stories written by Guardian readers, culled from a pool of almost 2,000 by judges William Boyd and Julie Myerson. The winning story, “Broken Crockery,” is the publishing debut (!) of Lisa Blower, who is studying creative writing at Bangor University. Here’s an excerpt: Mum says my nan’s in hospital with Margaret Thatcher. […] My nan doesn’t like Margaret Thatcher because she’d kicked women in the shins and blew […]


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recommended event: Ann Arbor Book Festival

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR will have a table at the 2009 Ann Arbor Book Festival (in the Writing Conference), which begins this Friday! Michigan-based writers, stop by and say hello to Jeremy, and also check out the Emerging Writers Network and Hobart. In addition to a book fair, this festival will feature an array of exciting panels (the one on the Future of the Book sounds especially interesting!), readings from authors like Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor) and Sung J. Woo (Everything Asian), and other events, such as this exploration of how a play comes to life “from page to stage,” a breakfast with […]


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ERN/Rock Bottom best band name contest!

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR contributor (and original Long Winters drummer) Michael Shilling’s debut novel Rock Bottom, an account of a band’s final tour, is publishing on January 9, and the Emerging Writers Network is sponsoring a very fun contest in its honor: Come up with the best imaginary band name you can think of and post it by midnight on January 14 here; there’s a limit of three entires per person, and Michael’s the judge. The reward is a free copy of Rock Bottom. Coming soon…an interview with the author on FWR.


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recommended: cover contest at Bookninja

by Anne Stameshkin

Falling behind on Google Reader, I almost miss awesome things like this contest by Bookninja. The premise is to “rebrand” literary titles with covers and quotes that make them more mass marketesque. If you click nowhere else today, click here to behold the finalists and here to see Bookninja’s own offerings, including Beloved-as-apocalypse. The entires will make you laugh and think about the more serious repercussions of rebranding. Voting is still open; email editors@bookninja.com with your top three picks by Friday. One of my favorite contenders is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road “as parenting book.” (For a higher-res version, check out […]




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