Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘writers on writing’

Shop Talk |

Book Blog Tour: Pamela Ehrenberg visits FWR

Pamela Ehrenberg is the author of a new YA novel, Tillmon County Fire, which has just been released from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Eerdmans also published her first book, Ethan, Suspended, in 2007. Pam and I have been members of a six- or seven-person writing group since 2004. She has an amazing ability to make characters come alive, a natural instinct for the puzzle of a story, and also a tremendous sense of dedication and productivity that existed long before she had a book contract. She’s also one of the kindest people I know, and it shows in her […]


Essays |

Quotes & Notes: Peering and Leaping into the Author/Character Vortex, Part 1

Let’s face it: fiction writers do not have a reputation for being carefree, untroubled souls. Even
our fellow artists consider us broody navel-gazers who are overly introspective and perhaps even in love with our own problems. (We do, after all, tend to keep writing about characters whose psychic profiles overlap significantly with ours.) The general public is hardly more charitable, usually assuming that (a) we study them to gather material, or (b) we all write thinly-veiled autobiography, and are so blind as to not even be aware of it. Do we deserve assessments like these? Probably so…


Shop Talk |

Center for Fiction Writers' Conference

by Anne Stameshkin

Fiction super-hero Ron Hogan (editor of Beatrice and senior editor of GalleyCat) and the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction have been in cahoots, and I am thrilled to announce that in just a few weeks, they will launch an exciting event: the first ever Center for Fiction Writers’ Conference. This day-long symposium is specifically intended for writers who already have a finished book and an agent, but who want to learn more about how the publishing world works–and how best to navigate it. In this post on Buzz, Balls, and Hype, Ron Hogan blogs about why this conference is important […]


Shop Talk |

The Program Era: future FWR discussion?

by Anne Stameshkin

After a hermitish week and weekend of work, I finally had the chance to sit down with my New Yorker this morning and read Louis Menand’s essayistic review of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard UP, Apr. 2009). It inspired me to order a copy of the book, which I think might be a great one to discuss via a group review on FWR. Who would be interested in joining this group review, which we’d aim to do in early August? Celeste, I know you’re in (and thanks to both you and […]


Interviews |

Who We Are Now: A Conversation with Colson Whitehead

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

At the Ann Arbor Book Festival, FWR’s Jeremiah Chamberlin talks with acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead about the process of writing his latest book, Sag Harbor, the art of manufacturing genuine nostalgia, and the duality of veering “between the capricious horribleness of the everyday and the absurd beauty of existence.”


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.


Shop Talk |

Short Story Month rec: "Miserere" by Robert Stone

Asked about his childhood religious beliefs by an interviewer, Robert Stone once said, “I was in that very difficult position you get in when you really believe in God, and at the same time you are very angry: God is this huge creature who we must know, love, and serve, though actually you feel like you want to kick the son of a bitch.” Throughout his career, Stone has drawn upon this confluence of anger and belief—and the despair that often results—to create some of his most resonant work. At their best, Stone’s portrayals of men and women guided (and […]


Essays |

Drawing a Line in the Sand: Literature and Today’s Market

I do not fear for literature, which has endured purges of all kinds, the death of the novel, the irrelevance of poetry, centuries without general literacy, and every other threat that has been hurled its way. Enough people hold it dear, and it is intrinsic enough to the human identity, for it to survive whatever problems plague it now. But I do fear for those young writers whose primary teaching in their craft is market-centered rather than literature-centered.




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