Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘young writers’

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Bookish Gift Idea #19: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

by Celeste Ng

Did you encounter The Mysteries of Harris Burdick when you were a kid? If so, you probably remember Chris Van Allsburg’s eerie black-and-white illustrations and the evocative sentences—each the merest sliver of a story—that accompanied them. When I was in fifth grade, my teacher asked us to choose a picture and write a story to go along with it. I chose the one to the right, which was titled “Archie Smith, Boy Wonder” and bore the caption, “A tiny voice asked, ‘Is he the one?’” No, I’m not going to share the story. But the fact that I remember the […]


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National Writers Series to host Jeffrey Eugenides October 20

by Celeste Ng

On Thursday, October 20, the Traverse City National Writers Series will host An Evening with Jeffrey Eugenides at 8pm at the Lars Hockstad Auditorium in Traverse City, Michigan.  The evening will conclude with a reception and book signing with the author. Here at Fiction Writers Review, we’re very excited about this reading–and not just because our own Jeremiah Chamberlin will be hosting, speaking with Eugenides about his new novel The Marriage Plot as well as his life and other work. The Traverse City National Writers Series’ events aren’t your typical readings.  Explains the organization’s website: In 2009, Doug Stanton, wife […]


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How to save a library? With postcards–and some attitude.

We’re delighted to present the following post by Nicole Aber, our FWR editorial intern. Enjoy! Last summer, I worked a few blocks away from the regal main branch of the New York Public Library near Bryant Park. During the interlude between the end of the work day and the start of a class I was taking, I’d sometimes take refuge in the humbling building, its architectural beauty and breathtaking murals never ceasing to amaze me. So when I came across the story of a young girl aiming to keep the city’s libraries open by writing comical postcards to New York […]


Interviews |

Never the Cool Kid: An Interview with Jeff Kass

Pioneer High School students Carlina Duan and Allison Kennedy sit down with famed Ann Arbor writing teacher and teen center director Jeff Kass to discuss his recent story collection, Knuckleheads. Kass discusses knuckleheadedness as a state of being, why being an outsider is important, the influence of Springsteen on his fiction, and the reason he wrote this book—in part—for his students. Bonus Track: an original off-the-top-of-the-dome list poem by Kass on “happiness.”


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The next generation

The San Francisco WritersCorps program places professional writers in community settings to teach creative writing to youth. Like the 826 programs around the U.S., Red Beard Press in Ann Arbor, or Voices Behind Walls in El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM, WritersCorps works with young people to hone their writing skills – poetry, fiction, memoir, song writing – as a means of creative power and self-expression. This year, WritersCorps won a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award for their work with young people. From their website: WritersCorps, a project of the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San […]


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Reviews from the Younger Set

by Celeste Ng

Here at Fiction Writers Review, many of our contributors are emerging writers, so we love sites that encourage those early in their writing careers. Recently I heard of a few sites that encourage those really early in their writing careers: kids and young adults. On The Huffington Post, Monica Edinger, a teacher at New York’s prestigious Dalton School, writes about an afterschool book blogging club she and several other instructors founded: Every week these literary enthusiasts come to my room; sift through my books and advance reader copies; choose to read whatever catches their fancy; and, after reading them, write […]


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More on the "Young" Writer

by Celeste Ng

The publication of the New Yorker‘s “20 Under 40” list caused quite a stir in the literary world recently. Partly, this was because such a list, issued with such authority from such an authority, raises particular expectations. But it was also partly because of the emphasis on “young” writers. In fact, as we previously mentioned, one blog, Ward Six, was so fed up with the “Under 40” list that it offered its own list of writers over 80. But in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus takes a different perspective, pointing out that “the emphasis on futurity […]



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