From the Archives: “I have always felt that scientists don’t get written enough as real people”: Eileen Pollack and Allie Tova Hirsch discuss sex scenes, melodrama, and Eileen’s novel A Perfect Life.
A highlight of 2018 AWP Conference panels and events featuring our recent contributors.
From the Archives: “Work can be your life, but your life can (and I’d argue, should be) bigger than your work”: Danielle Lazarin on writing, motherhood, and how the things in our lives that we give ourselves permission to experience that aren’t writing might in the end offer us new perspectives on both writing and our selves.
Desire is the writer’s best friend. When you know what your main character wants, you have your entire story. When someone wants something–badly–he or she will get up off the couch and try to attain it. The object of desire might be a new winter coat (“The Overcoat” by Gogol), a boy (“City of Boys” by Beth Nugent), money for a family member’s medicine (“King of the Bingo Game” by Ralph Ellison), a business contract (“Like a Bad Dream” by Heinrich Boll)–it doesn’t matter, as long as the desire is concrete and the character can pursue it. The character’s desire […]
Last week we featured Eileen Pollack’s new novel, Breaking and Entering, as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations: Nisa (@14writer) Procrastinatress (@denfemte) Jason Atkinson (@jasoncatkinson) To claim your free copy, 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!
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Eileen Pollack’s work at FWR. In fact, as our Founding and Features Editor, Anne Stameshkin, noted in an addendum to a 2009 interview with the author that we published on the site, Eileen Pollack–and her Contemporary Novel class at the University of Michigan–was one of the inspirations for the creation of Fiction Writers Review. So it’s with particular pleasure that we announce her new novel, Breaking and Entering, as our featured Book-of-the-Week title. Congratulations, Eileen! And we’re not alone in our admiration for this new book or Pollack’s work. In her laudatory […]
Brian Short talks to fiction guru Eileen Pollack about the juggling act of writing fiction, teaching writing, and directing the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Michigan. Her advice to writers: Be bold.
“The first thing I love, when I read, is the language. I can’t read anything where I don’t like the voice. What else do I like? I like plot, I like setting, I like humor, I like boldness. I think part of it has to do with being female. No one ever told Philip Roth to be more timid or nice, to have nicer characters or less sex, to not be as broad. And when a woman tests boundaries, it’s seen as unbecoming. We’re supposed to write these quiet, domestic stories or novels. I’ve just never been one to do that.”
