Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘debut story collection’

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass. Published in April by Dzanc Books, this is Kass’s first collection. He is also the author of a chapbook of poetry, Invisible Staircase, a chapbook of essays, From the Front of the Room, and a one-man poetica performance, Wrestle the Great Fear. Kass teaches creative writing at both Pioneer High School and Eastern Michigan University. He also serves as the Literary Arts Director at Ann Arbor’s teen center, The Neutral Zone. In March of this year, Carlina Daun and Allison Kennedy sat down with their former writing teacher to talk about […]


Essays |

The Sorrow and Grace of My People’s Waltz, by Dale Ray Phillips

Forrest Anderson on the semester he “caught fire as a writer,” when Ron Rash handed him a life-changing copy of Dale Ray Phillips’s debut, My People’s Waltz. Anderson describes the exquisite moments of grace in the collection when “all of the bad things to come are brewing on the horizon but haven’t yet managed to fully snag the family.”


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Separate Kingdoms, by Valerie Laken

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s featured title is Valerie Laken’s story collection Separate Kingdoms, which we’re pleased to announce has recently been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award! Laken was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois. She majored in English and Russian at the University of Iowa, then worked and studied in Moscow, Prague, Krakow, and Madison, before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, she received an MA in Slavic Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, where she taught for several years. Her first novel, Dream House, was published in 2009. She is currently […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: The New Valley

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Josh Weil’s novella collection The New Valley as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Edward Jarrett (@Edwardjarrett) Daan Kogelmans(@TheVoidComic) J.L. Clyde (@ninsiana0) To claim your signed copy of this collection, 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!


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Erika Dreifus reads in NYC

by Celeste Ng

Attention New Yorkers: FWR contributing editor Erika Dreifus will be reading from her debut story collection, Quiet Americans, on April 10 as part of the Sunday Salon series. She’ll be reading with Paul Lisicky, Karen Abbott, and Bino A. Realuyo. Not in NYC? On April 12, the Jewish Book Council’s Twitter Book Club will host Erika and her book for an online discussion from 12:30 to 1:10 pm EST. Follow @JewishBook and @ErikaDreifus and keep an eye on #JBCBooks for updates. And finally, Erika is giving away two Kindle “copies” of Quiet Americans to celebrate its release in Kindle format. […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week winners: Volt

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week Fiction Writers Review gives away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Alan Heathcock’s debut collection Volt (Graywolf, 2011), and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Melissa Buker Parcel, Kelly Smith, and Brad Green. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this collection. If you’d like to be eligible for future drawings, please visit our Facebook Page and “like” us. To everyone who’s already a fan, thanks again!


Reviews |

Volt, by Alan Heathcock

by Tyler McMahon

Tyler McMahon loves short stories but worries that collections might be the worst thing to have happened to the genre. However, books like Alan Heathcock’s Volt renew his faith in the collection as an art form of its own, one that makes its stories inseparable from one another—greater even than the sum of their parts.


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Volt, by Alan Heathcock

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week Fiction Writers Review gives away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Michael David Lukas’s debut novel The Oracle of Stamboul, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Robinson Stowell, Mary Westbrook, and Suzanne Hebert. Congratulations! Each will receive a signed copy of this novel. This week we’re pleased to feature Alan Heathcock’s debut collection Volt (Graywolf, 2011). Stories in this book have appeared in such places as Zoetrope: All-Story, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Storyville, and The Harvard Review. His work has also received […]


Shop Talk |

A bad time for writers? Not if you're a "debutant."

by Celeste Ng

True or false: It’s harder now to get published than ever. Answer: It depends. In the Financial Times, Adrian Turpin argues that the picture for debut novelists isn’t as bleak as you’d think: For most literary authors, the not-so-brave new world of publishing by numbers is terrible news. But there is one type of writer exempt from its strictures: the first novelist. Unsullied by inconvenient sales figures, the debutant exists uniquely in a state of prelapsarian grace, a blank canvas on which publishers can dream. […] Even recession has failed to dent the perennial desire for the new. While the […]




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