Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘lit and politics’

Shop Talk |

Shout-Out: Erika Dreifus on remembering the Munich Olympics

Over at The Jewish Daily Forward, FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus has written a moving piece about the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics of 1972 and how this event found their way into her fiction. Erika writes about how her classmates challenged her use of this history: When I workshopped “Homecomings,” several classmates thought that my inclusion of the 1972 Munich Olympics was extraneous. The story of Jewish refugees returning to their homeland was “powerful enough,” they argued. My story “didn’t need” the added layer of history I’d given it. Incredulous, I broke the cardinal workshop rule […]


Interviews |

The Underdog Who Realized He Was on Top: An Interview with Jonas Hassen Khemiri

An invented language, off-stage heroes, searing political comedy. Katarina Matsson sits down with award-winning Swedish playwright and novelist Jonas Hassen Khemiri to discuss translation, the power-struggle of words, rats, germs, leaving home to write about it, and why hearing voices doesn’t necessarily mean you’re crazy.


Shop Talk |

Occupy… Your Bookshelf

So you may have heard about this little thing happening on Wall Street (and in L.A., Boston, Phoenix, San Diego, Chicago, Cincinnati, Berlin, Paris–oh, just read the list here). What you may not know is that the Occupy Wall Street protestors have a library of their own. Reports GalleyCat: As the Occupy Wall Street protest continues, the activists camped out in New York City have built an impressive library. Thanks to Library Thing, you can now explore the library online and watch it grow. Currently, the makeshift library counts 390 books. Well, that was on October 11–the library now stands […]


Interviews |

The Humpbacked Minaret: An Interview with Mahmoud Saeed

Over the past six decades, Iraqi writer Mahmoud Saeed has used his novels, stories, and nonfiction to deconstruct the political and social turmoil of his beloved homeland. In a wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Morison, Jr., Saeed describes the difficulties Arab authors face in getting published, the institutionalized barriers to freedom of expression, and his constant attempt, through fiction, to “solve the puzzle of man and his actions.”