Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘lit and tech’

Shop Talk |

is short the new black?

by Celeste Ng

Flash fiction is rising in prominence both online and in print. (For an introduction to the form, see Sophie Powell’s review of The Field Guide to Flash Fiction.) Then came the six-word story trend. And now there’s 7×20, a Twitter-zine publishing short stories and fiction of 140 characters or less. In fact, 7×20 is just one of several Twitter-based short-story outlets. Mediabistro notes that such sites have been springing up everywhere. Some, like Nanoism, even pay. Here are four complete stories: She shows him her wedding ring and he just shrugs. I would be more interested in you if my […]


Interviews |

Type type type: A Conversation with Mimi Smartypants

I don’t generally read personal blogs, partly out of an allergy to the twee self-consciousness that so easily results from self-chronicling. But when I stumbled across Mimi Smartypants’s diary a few years ago, I found that I was looking at something different from the typical navel-gazing blog. Rather, what I experience sometimes when I read her diary is that strange phenomenon that first brought me to fiction as a child, and has kept me here all these years.


Shop Talk |

DZANC Books 2009 Best of the Web Anthology Launches

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Because we are an online journal ourselves, it’s no surprise that FWR is excited to announce the release of The Best of the Web 2009, published by DZANC Books. This is their second volume of the annual anthology, which selects the best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published online during the previous year. Click here to read my full review of Best of the Web 2009 here on FWR. Big Congratulations to all the writers included in this year’s collection, and to the editors for bringing together such a range of voices and talent.


Shop Talk |

four ways of looking at a novel

by Anne Stameshkin

To answer the personal question “Do I love books, or do I love reading?” — and the larger question “In which format(s) is the book most likely to endure?” — author Ann Kirschner (Sala’s Gift) tried Dickens’s Little Dorrit in four formats: paperback, audio, iPhone, and Kindle. She discusses her impressions of each in this Chronicle of Higher Education article. Among them: the particular pleasures of audio books, why the iPhone e-reader is “a Kindle killer,” and the power of story to transcend any device. Read Little Dorrit in paperback. Listen to Little Dorrit as an audio book Read Little […]


Shop Talk |

recommended reading: L.A. Times's "Writers on Writing" series

by Anne Stameshkin

Thanks to Erika/Practicing Writing for alerting FWR to the L.A. Times‘s new “Writers on Writing” feature, which publishes every Friday. This week’s upcoming installment will the the fifth, but there are already some very interesting essays, including a piece by Taylor Antrim on writing the second novel and last week’s essay by Rich Cohen: “Will Facebook kill literature’s ‘leave the past behind’ themes?” Read more about (and excerpts from) Taylor Antrim’s debut novel, The Headmaster Ritual, here, and more about Rich Cohen’s books, The Avengers and Tough Jews, here.


Essays |

Games Are Not About Monsters

Monster-killing does not have to be a hypersigil; it’s more basic than that. The organizing moral principles of a game world often boil down to something desperately obvious: black-and-white, good and evil. This isn’t bad in itself because a good game, like a good book, then takes the player into a more familiar ambiguity. Good and bad become less easily separated and less relevant the longer you travel. The trick is to create, in the gamer, a commitment to a point of view, whatever its morality…


Shop Talk |

Amazon calls FAIL "ham-fisted" – but questions linger

by Anne Stameshkin

The sales figures are coming back. But I have to say I’m still very suspicious of this whole thing…call it a “glitch,” or a flipped-switch error, or the fault of the French, or an elaborate prank by a famous hacker. Whatever may have happened and whoever may be at fault, Amazon is offering explanations, not apologies, and considering the magnitude of the situation, I think the latter is sorely needed. And said explanations have more than a few holes. Whatever unfolds in the next few days, Amazon owes customers (1) a speedy and complete fix…a “flipped-switch error” really shouldn’t take […]


Shop Talk |

AmazonFAIL and the bookseller's new "adult" (read: homophobic) policy

by Anne Stameshkin

I finally succumbed and joined Twitter‘s ranks this weekend. Shortly after joining, I learned through a topic called #AmazonFAIL — 5 million+ comments — about Amazon’s new and highly sketchy policy regarding “adult” books. Below is Amazon’s response to author Mark Probst about why his YA book’s sales figures are no longer listed, followed by excerpts from and links to protests/responses: Amazon, to Probst: In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that […]


Shop Talk |

QueryFail Day

by Anne Stameshkin

I’m going to cave one of these days and join Twitter (rather than merely blogging about it), if just to listen in on the next QueryFail Day. Last month, a number of agents designated March 5th the first QueryFail Day, a 24-hour period devoted to Twittering 140-character summaries of the worst queries they’d recently received. The one ground rule was that no querying author could be referred to by name or any other identifying characteristic. That aside, the gloves came off! Did the day serve more to mock would-be authors (as “Positivity Week” agent Nathan Bransford claims) or to educate […]




Literary Partners