Threats, by Amelia Gray
by Lee Thomas
From the Archives: Your one person dies. Does life’s plot float away like a sinister version of the house in Up? Amelia Gray’s debut novel, Threats, gets cozy with chaos. Anxious? You damn well should be.
From the Archives: Your one person dies. Does life’s plot float away like a sinister version of the house in Up? Amelia Gray’s debut novel, Threats, gets cozy with chaos. Anxious? You damn well should be.
“On a strip of paper on my kitchen wall are the words “Thinking is for morons.” I’m much more prone to that way of being in the world, both on and off the page.”
Thanks to an unusual collaboration between two translators, Marguerite Duras’ 1971 novel L’Amour has been translated into English for the first time.
Jim Krusoe’s twelfth book, the novel Parsifal, launches into Unreal territory. The author on Kafka, dreams, playing the lotto, and why he’s given up motorcycles.
Michael Rudin presents Hobart, our latest Journal of the Week. The journal’s ability to curate badass, cutting-edge narratives has helped this modest upstart grow out of Founding Editor Aaron Burch’s bedroom into a full-on web/print literary journal and publisher.
We’ve talked about Twitterfiction quite a bit here on the FWR blog (see the Further Reading section, below), but meet a new form of microfiction: 55 Fiction. Actually, 55 Fiction isn’t all that new: for years, The New Times, an alt-weekly paper in San Luis Obispo, California, has been running contests challenging writers to tell a story in 55 words or less. Here’s one of this year’s winners: “Kinda Blue,” by John Garaci Chillin’ on the sofa. Text from Michelle. She’s comin’ over. Roll a doobie. Play Kind of Blue. She melts at this song. thanks Messieurs Davis and Coltrane. […]
Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.
I have a theory that in 50 years, or maybe even 20, scholars will be studying a new form of fiction that’s just beginning now. It’s not exactly narrative, nor is it strictly prose. In fact, some of it isn’t even stories. But it involves imagining the secret details of characters’ lives, articulating their thoughts and fears, developing their voices and diction and tone. Unlike typical fanfiction, this new mode of storytelling often use social media or other unconventional means, as if the characters themselves were real people living in and interacting in our world. For lack of a better […]
The stories in PANK epitomize their founders’ spirit of innovation, and it’s this spirit that has quickly helped build the journal a loyal community. Read on to learn more about how the journal provides inspiration for writers and readers alike.