Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

Reviews |

The Bigness of the World, by Lori Ostlund

by J.T. Bushnell

J.T. Bushnell considers how Lori Ostlund’s debut story collection, The Bigness of the World, filled as it is with “godless homosexuals scattered across the globe” would have likely pleased Flannery O’Connor, whose own work is “unapologetically regional and almost dogmatically Catholic.” Ostlund, who won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction last year, writes of the mystery beneath our outer trappings, an underlying truth that binds the two writers in common cause.


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Ploughshares

by Lee Thomas

In a landscape crowded with brand-new literary mags – which are always exciting to FWR – we want to give a shout out to an old stalwart: Ploughshares. Started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, Ploughshares has called Emerson College home for the past two decades. Several Fiction Writers Review contributors have had work appear in the magazine, including Valerie Laken and brand new Contributing Editor Travis Holland. One of my favorite aspects of Ploughshares is that every issue is edited by a different guest editor, who shapes the theme and selects pieces with his or her own particular aesthetic. Past […]


Shop Talk |

Selected

How often does it happen? Once or twice, maybe? You’re in a bookstore, you’re at the library, drifting among the stacks, your eye glazed over not with boredom but indecision, because you simply cannot decide what it is you want to read next. Reading something next, that’s the easy part, particularly if you’re one of those readers for whom the prospect of not reading something, anything, is just, well, unthinkable. You read one book or one story, and when you’ve finished that, you read another. It’s like breathing in a way, one breath and then another, and another. But on […]


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Wigleaf

by Lee Thomas

There’s something to be said for simplicity. An afternoon spent at the park. Only what you can fit in your pocket. A bowl of fresh apricots straight from the tree (sorry, New York has me dreaming of summer already). Every time I visit Wigleaf, their clean design aesthetic, wide margins and punchy, brief stories of under 1,000 words feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day (even when I am looking at several inches of snow outside the window). Wigleaf started in 2008, and we have Scott Garson to thank for the design and main editing on […]


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Narrative

by Lee Thomas

Family driving you to bunker down in the spare room with your laptop? Never fear! Narrative magazine’s Winter 2011 Issue is up. You can read a six word story by Sherman Alexie that will probably make you feel like your own family isn’t so nuts. You can read three prize-winning tales from Narrative‘s Spring Contest. Fiction, cartoons, poetry, nonfiction – a rich collage of storytelling, right there for the enjoying. I’ll stop rattling on, and let you get to it. Maybe the stories you read will provide some fodder for dinner-table discussion? You never know.


Shop Talk |

The Story Behind Storyville

by Michael Rudin

Don’t call Paul Vidich the Mayor of Storyville. He prefers Matchmaker. That’s because Storyville is less about Vidich, its creator, than his application’s ambitious plan to “bring together writers and readers.” As you might imagine, Storyville is focused solely on the short story. Exclusive to owners of iPhones and iPads, the application promises to deliver one story every week, for which subscribers must pay $4.99 for a six-month subscription. In the end, this means Storyville’s residents will end up paying less than a quarter per story. Vidich promises they won’t be just any stories. The Storyville editorial team is focused […]


Interviews |

Stalking the Inner Celestial: An Interview with Michael Byers

Michael Shilling’s interview with Percival’s Planet author Michael Byers delves into the fascinating characters – both historical and imagined – that populate Byers’ novel, which deals with the 1930s discovery of Pluto. Shilling says, “Reminiscent of such lightweights as James and Welty, Byers’ work shines with studied and infuried illuminations of the imperfect spirit; he can map out this process of inner grappling with a lovely, intense, and disciplined artistry.”


Shop Talk |

Thursday morning candy: Waccamaw

by Lee Thomas

It’s been out for a while, but I’ve been perusing Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6. The biannual, online journal out of Coastal Carolina University includes fiction by Julie Babcock, Sarah McCraw Crow, Billy O’Callaghan, Nick Ripatrazone, and Jennifer Spiegel, along with poetry, essay, and a long interview with poet Natasha Trethewey. There’s also a transcript of Trethewey’s Emory University Distinguished Faculty Lecture, which she delivered earlier this year. In it, she observes: It seems to me that all writers, at some point, must respond to a question—posed either by themselves or someone else—in order to answer, as […]


Shop Talk |

The Fiction Project

by Lee Thomas

Like to doodle in the margins of your stories? Sketch in the park until inspiration for a story strikes? The folks behind Art House Co-Op – out of the Brooklyn Art Library – who came up with the traveling Sketchbook Project, that sends themed sketchbooks around the country on exhibit, have just announced The Fiction Project. Like The Sketchbook Project, anyone can participate, for the $25 entry fee they’ll send you a book to fill: The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. Add your voice to this year’s […]




Literary Partners