By CONOR BROUGHAN, Fiction Editor
 We here at Sycamore Review are pleased to extend our congratulations to contributing fiction writer Adam Prince whose short story collection The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men will be published by Black Lawrence Press next year. Prince won the 2010 Wabash Fiction prize with his short story “The Island of Lost Boys.” We knew when we published the story that Adam Prince was only at the beginning of a very exciting writing career and the publication of his first collection of short stories is evidence of that.
Keep your eyes peeled for the new collection from Black Lawrence Press next year and in the meantime, be sure to check out the 2010 Wabash Fiction prize-winning story “The Island of Lost Boys” in our Issue 22.2-Summer/Fall 2010. And while you’re at it, …MORE
Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to contributor Greg Schutz that might illuminate his process and techniques when writing his story “You are the Greatest Lake” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.1-Winter/Spring 2011.
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BY GREG SCHUTZ
The next day is Sunday, the end of our long weekend on the shore, and Dot wants to fish. After breakfast, John finds a small rod for her and ties a golden hook to the end of the line. The knot he uses is a complicated, twisting thing, his fingers moving faster than my eyes can follow. He and Dot walk the edge of the yard, prying up rocks and rotten logs to gather angleworms and grubs. I watch from the kitchen window. Dot is fearless, plunging wrist-deep into the dirt.
Today, John …MORE
BY CONOR BROUGHAN
 Jim Shepard’s new collection of short stories You Think That’s Bad was recently published and Mr. Shepard was kind of enough to take the time to respond to our questions about his new book over email. Be sure to read the full review of You Think That’s Bad in the Reviews section of the website.
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels, including most recently Project X, and four story collections, including most recently Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Story Prize, and You Think That’s Bad, due out in March.
Sycamore Review: In your new story “Your Fate Hurtles Down at You,” the Frozen Idiots—four men that have volunteered to study avalanche defense measures in the Alps—tell each other uncanny and macabre …MORE
BY JIM DANIELS
Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to contributor Jim Ray Daniels that might illuminate his process and techniques when writing his heartbreaking story “Candy Necklace” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.1-Winter/Spring 2011.
Shelley bit another hard, tasteless bead off of her candy necklace. A yellow one. It tasted just like a green or red one. The flimsy elastic holding it together stretched across her mouth. Then, she bit off a red one—pink, really—and pulled the necklace back down over her neck. Sticky where other beads had gotten wet with spit.
Her mother, Ginger, sat next to her on the orange plastic waiting room bench in the emergency room at Mercy Shelley pressed a huge bloody mess of towels against Ginger’s arm as they waited to be called—so much blood …MORE
BY SUSAN FRITH
Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to Susan Frith that might illuminate her process and techniques when writing her beautiful story “Your Guide to Painting with Radium” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.1-Winter/Spring 2011.
First, consider your other options.
Silent Cal is in the White House and you’re a girl just out of high school in Ottawa, Illinois. This will limit you, but there are a few possibilities in town.
Do you have short arms? Then you cannot be a switchboard operator. Now look at your hands and fingers. They’re slender, yes, with well-formed tips. But what about that crescent scar from the stove lid? No department store will hire you. Don’t fret though. Few girls have the proper looks for the sales counter, and even those who do …MORE
 by CONOR BROUGHAN Sycamore Review is honored to publish “Last Words,” a new story by Edith Pearlman, in our forthcoming Winter/Spring 2011 issue. On January 11th, Lookout Books published a volume of her new and selected stories which we review below. Be sure to read our online review. Edith Pearlman has published more than 250 works of short fiction and short non-fiction in national magazines, literary journals, anthologies, and on-line publications. Her work has been selected by Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Collection, Best Short Stories from the South, and The Pushcart Prize Collection. Her essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Preservation, and Yankee. Her travel writing has been published in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and salon.com. She is the author of four collections of stories: Vaquita (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), Love Among The Greats (Eastern Washington University Press, 2002), and How To Fall (Sarabande Press, 2005), and Binocular Vision, published by Lookout Books in January 2011. Sycamore Review: Your new book Binocular Vision: …MORE
BY GREG SCHUTZ
We are at the tip of the thumb of Michigan. The sky threatens sun, so John has reluctantly left the water and run into town for groceries. His waders, latex and neoprene, hang in the mudroom. They smell sourly of rubber and sweat and still hold the shape of his legs. I put a pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator to chill. The rental cottage is quiet. From the back porch, I can see Dot out in the bay, practicing the dead-man’s float. Dot is John’s daughter. She is eight years old. “I love you,” I say.
Distantly, she stirs in the water, as if she’s heard me.
The yard rolls down to the lake, grass giving way to pebbles and shells, pebbles and shells pouring smoothly into the water to form the firm, gravelly bottom that John says draws bass into the bay. I know …MORE
BY CONOR BROUGHAN Sycamore Review is honored to publish “Last Words,” a new story by Edith Pearlman, in our forthcoming Winter/Spring 2011 issue. On January 11th, Lookout Books published a volume of her new and selected stories which we review below. Be sure to check back for an interview with Edith Pearlman at the end of the month. Edith Pearlman has published more than 250 works of short fiction and short non-fiction in national magazines, literary journals, anthologies, and on-line publications. Her work has been selected by Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Collection, Best Short Stories from the South, and The Pushcart Prize Collection. Her essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Preservation, and Yankee. Her travel writing has been published in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and salon.com. She is the author of four collections of stories: Vaquita (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), Love Among The Greats (Eastern Washington University Press, 2002), and How To Fall (Sarabande Press, 2005), and Binocular Vision, published by Lookout Books in January 2011. In Edith Pearlman’s story …MORE
Adam Prince, the 2010 Wabash Fiction Prize winner, has been on quite a roll recently. Besides winning the 2010 Wabash Prize for his story “Island of the Lost Boys” which Peter Ho Davies noted for its “acute observations, wry wit, and delicate characterization.…The result is a quietly, almost furtively, heartbreaking story.” Beyond winning the Wabash Prize, Prince also won the 2010 Narrative Magazine Winter Contest, and his stories have appeared in many journals including The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review and LIT among others. Sycamore Review’s Fiction Editor Conor Broughan wanted to check in with Adam to find out the secret of his recent success and to ask a few questions about “Island of the Lost Boys,” a story that we here at Sycamore Review are proud to have published. Find an excerpt of the story …MORE
BY BROCK CLARKE Rupert goes first. Rupert’s real name is Shamequa, but we call her Rupert because one of the things we do is give black women the names of white men. We also give white women the names of Asian men, and young Hispanic men the names of old white women. And so on. This is our way of helping promote better understanding of people who are not like us, which also happens to be the name of our city-mandated program: Helping Promote Better Understanding of People Who Are Not Like Us. …MORE
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