Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘how fiction works’

Reviews |

Call It What You Want, by Keith Lee Morris

In these thirteen stories, which move from gritty realism in the first half to magical realism in the second, characters are constantly engaged in the act of narrative construction. Again and again Morris structures his stories to obscure actual events, thereby forcing the characters to remember, speculate, or fantasize them into being, much like writers do. Only these characters are not writers—they are a meth addict, a car salesman, a bartender stranded on a desert island.


Interviews |

Sabotage and Subversion: An Interview with Joshua Furst

by Lee Thomas

Joshua Furst grapples with the human condition by creating characters on the edge. They inhabit the fringes of society, sanity and cultural norms, but remain incredibly grounded in a common American experience, with all its oddball rituals and quirks.


Interviews |

Imagined Landscapes of History: An Interview with David Ebershoff

Brian Bartels talks with David Ebershoff–author, editor-at-large for Random house, and Columbia professor–about such topics as the role research plays in his writing, writing the book you want to read, the advice his gives his students about drafting, and how he approaches revision.


Interviews |

The Truth About Fiction: An Interview with Peter Selgin

by JT Torres

Peter Selgin’s debut novel, Life Goes to the Movies, is based in large part on his experiences growing up in New York in the 1970s. JT Torres talks to the author about bringing fact to fiction, strategies for the revision process, why identity is so important in his work, and more. Following the interview is an exclusive excerpt from Selgin’s novel-in-progress, Hattertown.


Reviews |

Concord, Virginia, by Peter Neofotis

The yarn-like stories that make up this debut collection recount the life of an imagined town in northern Virginia. Unlike a traditional collection, Neofotis chooses an oral storytelling method to structure these stories, utilizing the conceit that the narrator is not just the vehicle through which we are relayed the narrative but an actual character himself, one who sits down beside us to spool out poignant stories, juicy pieces of gossip, and far-fetched legends from his small town.


Interviews |

Learning About the Dark: An Interview with Ron Carlson

“Whatever you do, stay in the room.” So advises Ron Carlson in his book on the craft of writing, appropriately titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story. He knows what world exists on the other side of the door: a world full of televised sports, dirty dishes, iced mochachinos. A world full of distraction from the task at hand. Writing, he argues, is about staying in the room, pushing beyond the point where your eyes glaze over and your fingers refuse to type. That’s where the magic lies.


Interviews |

The Landscape of Fiction: An interview with Allan Gurganus

Dana Kletter sits down to talk with famed fiction writer Allan Gurganus. Their conversation ranges from sexuality to southerness, from his affinity for the 19th century to how reading the work of fellow writers can be a shaping force in one’s fiction, from gardening between paragraphs to Halloween political activism, and plenty more about teaching and the craft of writing.


Shop Talk |

Microchondria Short Short Story Anthology

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last month we announced the Harvard Book Store’s short short story contest. In honor of the shortest month of the year, the store was seeking submissions that were both short in length (less than 500 words) and written during a brief period of time (between February 1-17). The results have now been posted, and we are pleased to announce that a story by contributor Liana Imam will be collected in an anthology of the winners, entitled Microchondria. In addition to Liana’s work, friend of FWR Cody Walker–whose cartoon caption won a recent New Yorker caption contest that we blogged about […]


Shop Talk |

NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest

by Anne Stameshkin

The flash-fiction / short-short-short trend continues… For Round II of this contest, NPR invites writers to submit an original work that begins with this sentence: “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Instructions, via the site: One entry per person, and no more than 600 words, please. Stories must be received by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25. We’ll post a favorite story weekly until the New Yorker‘s James Wood picks our winner and reads his or her story on the air. The winner will also receive a signed copy of Wood’s book, How Fiction Works. (And if you […]




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