Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘FWR news’

Shop Talk |

new review on FWR: The Moon in Deep Winter by Lee Polevoi

by Tyler McMahon

Click here to read Tyler McMahon’s review in full. Here’s a taste: Like a cold, northeastern version of Thomas McGuane’s 92 in the Shade, Lee Polevoi’s impressive debut novel, The Moon in Deep Winter, is the story of a misguided homecoming gone wrong. After years spent as a bit player on the margins of Southern California’s criminal underworld, Parker returns to his rural New England town, hoping to reconcile differences with his mother, his younger half-siblings, and his dictatorial step-father. He soon finds that his family secrets run even deeper and darker than he thought.


Shop Talk |

new essay on FWR: Peering and Leaping into the Author/Character Vortex, Part 1, by Steven Wingate

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR just posted the first installment of Quotes and Notes, a monthly craft essay series by Steven Wingate. Each essay responds to a (famous or obscure) dictum on writing from a prominent fiction writer. This month’s quotation comes from Raymond Carver: “You are not your characters, but your characters are you.” From Steven’s response: Let’s face it: fiction writers do not have a reputation for being carefree, untroubled souls. Even our fellow artists consider us broody navel-gazers who are overly introspective and perhaps even in love with our own problems. (We do, after all, tend to keep writing about characters […]


Shop Talk |

new interview with Colson Whitehead on FWR

by Anne Stameshkin

At the Ann Arbor Book Festival, FWR’s Jeremiah Chamberlin talked with acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead about the process of writing his latest book, Sag Harbor, the art of manufacturing genuine nostalgia, and the duality of veering “between the capricious horribleness of the everyday and the absurd beauty of existence.” Click here to read their conversation.


Shop Talk |

What are you doing this summer?

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR’s contributors are participating in some very cool programs, and we’re eager to know what other writers are up to over the next few months. Leave a comment here, or email fictionwritersreview@gmail.com to tell us where you’ll be writing, teaching, or otherwise fictionizing. (And check in tomorrow to hear more about the Catskill Studio for Writing.) 1. Natalie Bakopoulos is currently teaching a week-long writing workshop on the Greek island of Andros as a part of the Aegean Arts Circle, which was founded in 2003 by Amalia Melis. Stratis Haviaris, a poet and the founding editor of the Harvard Review, […]


Shop Talk |

FWR dinner party, San Francisco-style

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR Associate Editor Lee Thomas and I finally met face-to-face at this lovely dinner at Lee’s apartment. Behold her (amazing) homemade lasagna and plum cake! Not pictured: excellent conversation, graphic novel recommendations, and happy plotting for our website’s future.


Shop Talk |

new review on FWR: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

by Charlotte Boulay

a taste: I want my life to be a Kelly Link story. I mean it, even though many of the characters in her stories are a little lost, literally or emotionally, and even though others are in danger. Pretty Monsters is intended to be a young adult collection of short stories. This in itself is new—there aren’t many YA story collections, are there? But even if there are, there is nothing like Kelly Link. It’s useful that a few of the stories in Pretty Monsters are republished from her earlier collections, Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen, because I […]


Shop Talk |

new review on FWR: Friend of Mankind by Julian Mazor

by Helen W. Mallon

Julian Mazor’s wonderful, unsung second collection of stories, Friend of Mankind published in 2004, thirty-six years after his first. Mazor’s elegant language evokes settings that are simultaneously a backdrop for and a mirror of his characters’ inner lives, and his compassion for these characters is almost physical. Click here to read the full review by Helen Mallon.


Shop Talk |

recommended event: Guerrilla Lit Reading Series tonight!

by Anne Stameshkin

I’ll be on a plane to San Francisco, but if you’ll be in NYC tonight, head to BAR on A – 170 Avenue A @ 11th – at 7:30 PM to see FWR contributor and fictiontastic writer Lee Goldberg read with Meakin Armstrong and Deenah Vollmeras part of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series. From anywhere, you can follow Guerrilla Lit on Twitter: http://twitter.com/guerrillalit. About the Writers* Lee Goldberg teaches Literature and Composition at LaGuardia Community College. He has an MFA from New School University and is a founding member of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series. He is currently working on […]


Shop Talk |

After the Ann Arbor Book Festival

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

There’s an old adage in these parts: If you don’t like the weather in Michigan, wait five minutes. This was certainly true to form the last several days here at the Ann Arbor Book Festival. Friday dawned beautiful, cloudless and warm. Yet by the cocktail hour the sky was spitting and sputtering. Saturday, too, threatened rain. But other than a few windy gusts that lifted the tents on the Ingalls Mall, the weather held. In fact, by mid afternoon that second day the clouds had gone. And the only rain we received was through the night—the literary Gods were smiling. […]




Literary Partners