Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Orientation, by Daniel Orozco

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Orientation, by Daniel Orozco. Published in May by Faber & Faber, this long-awaited and much-anticipated collection is Orozco’s first book. His stories have appeared in such places as Zoetrope: All Story, Ecotone, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, StoryQuarterly, Mid-American Review, Seattle Review, and Story. In 1995 the title story of this collection was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories, and in 2005 “Officer’s Weep” was anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories. He was a Scowcroft and L’Heureux Fiction Fellow and a Jones Lecturer in Fiction in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. He has […]


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Book-of-the-Week Winners: Miracle Boy

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured Miracle Boy as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Kate Thompson (@kateEthompson) Francesca Miller (@creoleimp) Angela Meyer (@LiteraryMinded) To claim your copy of this collection, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!


Interviews |

Find Your Metaphor: An Interview with Daniel Orozco

Daniel Orozco’s debut has been a long time coming. Now fans of his prizewinning fiction can enjoy an entire collection, Orientation: And Other Stories. Michael Shilling calls him in Idaho to talk geographic love letters, G. Gordon Liddy, and the peculiar challenge of gimmicks.


Reviews |

Miracle Boy and Other Stories, by Pinckney Benedict

by Shawn Andrew Mitchell

Shawn Mitchell gets under the hood of Pinckney Benedict’s Miracle Boy and Other Stories to see how the author manages to pack an apocalypse into each story. In his newest book, Benedict revisits his Appalachian heritage and peoples it with mythological bulls, dogs, mudmen, and robots.


Shop Talk |

I'll see your 140 characters and raise you 55 words.

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked about Twitterfiction quite a bit here on the FWR blog (see the Further Reading section, below), but meet a new form of microfiction: 55 Fiction. Actually, 55 Fiction isn’t all that new: for years, The New Times, an alt-weekly paper in San Luis Obispo, California, has been running contests challenging writers to tell a story in 55 words or less. Here’s one of this year’s winners: “Kinda Blue,” by John Garaci Chillin’ on the sofa. Text from Michelle. She’s comin’ over. Roll a doobie. Play Kind of Blue. She melts at this song. thanks Messieurs Davis and Coltrane. […]


Interviews |

Not Just Visible But Beautiful: An Interview with Kevin Brockmeier

by Polly Stewart

Known for stories and novels that force us to question the conventional dichotomy between realist and fantasy fiction, Kevin Brockmeier knows how to reveal the strangeness of the world around us. In conversation with Mary Stewart Atwell, Brockmeier discusses his new novel, The Illumination, and the compelling metaphors that inform his writing.


Reviews |

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, by Alissa Nutting

by Laura Valeri

Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.


Reviews |

Right of Way, by Andrew Wingfield

Andrew Wingfield’s short story collection examines how suburban sprawl in a neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C. impacts its inhabitants, both human and animal. Residents new and old must navigate rapid economic and social change in the face of American politics.


Interviews |

How to Leave and Why You Stay: An Interview with Jennine Capó Crucet

by Melissa Scholes Young

When The Clash asked the question “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Jennine Capó Crucet had an answer. In How to Leave Hialeah, Crucet’s debut short story collection, characters wrestle with how the places they’re from shape their identity, how to grow beyond them, and why leaving is sometimes the only answer.


Reviews |

Breathing, In Dust, by Tim Z. Hernandez

Tim Z. Hernandez’s Breathing, In Dust rips along like one of the trains whose wheels sing Catela, Catela, Catela, Catela as they churn through the San Juaquin valley. In twenty linked, ferociously compact short stories and a lyrical prologue, Hernandez sings of Catela too, triumphantly bringing this fictional farming community to life.




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