Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘debut novel’

Shop Talk |

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.


Interviews |

Interview with Travis Holland, The Archivist’s Story

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Travis Holland’s first novel, The Archivist’s Story (2007, Dial Press), is set in Stalinist Russia in 1939. The book has been translated into eleven languages and has received numerous accolades, including: a Guardian Readers’ Pick of 2007, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, a Best Fiction of 2007 choice by Metro.co.uk, a Best Book of 2007 by both the Financial Times and Publisher’s Weekly, and the 2008 VCU Cabell First novelist award. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, where he is at work on his next novel. Jeremiah Chamberlin spoke with him for FWR on December 18, 2008.


Reviews |

Dream City, by Brendan Short

Brendan Short’s debut novel tells the story of Michael Halligan, a nervous child who, in 1930s Chicago, finds solace in the Sunday adventure comics, where pulp heroes like Dick Tracy and the Shadow bring down the bad guys. As Michael grows up, his obsession with the Big Little Books makes human connection difficult, eventually trapping him inside his collectibles shop.


Shop Talk |

Jesmyn Ward reads *tonight* in Brooklyn – 8 PM @ BAM Cafe!

by Anne Stameshkin

I’m excited to hear Jesmyn Ward read from her beautiful debut novel Where the Line Bleeds. Her reading tonight is part of “Rear Windows,” a BAM Cafe event presented in partnership with A Public Space. This last installment of the Between the Lines series also features a reading by Ian Chillag, films by Félix Dufour-Laperrière and Eva Weber, and a multimedia performance by Dark Hand and Lamplight. Go here for directions and more information.


Reviews |

The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti

In this masterful debut novel, Hannah Tinti beguiles without the slightest trace of the maudlin. Readers will fall in love with Ren, a one-handed orphan boy who works for grave-robbers and longs for a family, and with North Umbrage–a 19th-century New England town where widows press their ears to the earth to listen for their husbands, trapped long ago in a mine collapse.


Shop Talk |

shout-out: Preeta Samarasan on the lists!

by Anne Stameshkin

Preeta Samarasan‘s Evening is the Whole Day is getting some well-deserved list love. For the Guardian‘s best books of 2008, Ann Tyler names the novel as one of her top three (along with two other books reviewed on FWR, Miriam Towes’s The Flying Troutmans and Richard Price’s Lush Life), and Ali Smith also chooses it (along with Toni Morrision’s A Mercy and the reprint of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity) for the Times Literary Supplement‘s Books of the Year List. Congratulations, Preeta! And thanks to fabulous lit-blogger Bibliobibuli for the news and links.


Shop Talk |

The Good Thief wins John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize

by Anne Stameshkin

Warm congratulations to Hannah Tinti! Check out the story here. Bonus: Hannah is guest-teaching my fiction workshop tomorrow. As a longtime fan of her work (and a One Story subscriber) I am thrilled to formally meet her and introduce her to my students. And a review of the dazzling The Good Thief is forthcoming (this weekend or next week) on FWR.


Shop Talk |

reviewlet: How Far is the Ocean from Here by Amy Shearn

by Anne Stameshkin

How Far is the Ocean from Here, Amy Shearn’s captivating debut, follows a young surrogate mother who flees to the desert shortly before her due date. Accomplishing a seemingly impossible goal, the novel sustains the quality and language of a short story for 320 pages. Shearn exceeds at painting characters and relationships – particularly the bond between surrogate Susannah and father Julian; an adopted child himself, Julian feels a strong pull to the woman carrying his first blood relative–much to the chagrin of his wife, Kit. The book’s POV, a shifting third person with hints of omniscience, is ambitious and […]




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