If I were independently wealthy, I would be less for it, because the chase for money to pay for food, shelter, babies, and now small children has taken me from sharing with two women an eighty square foot octagonal house originally built in the early twentieth century in rural Florida to house a wealthy child’s doll collection, to a room in a massive and mostly unoccupied schoolhouse converted into a lakefront hotel by the tax evading gangster Al Capone …more

The Rumpus Book Club’s February pick is You Think That’s Bad, a new collection of short stories by Jim Shepard. For the last decade, Shepard has been an open and agreeable interviewee. Here are a few Rumpus favorites:

In 2004, while on tour promoting Project X, Shepard spoke with Robert Birnbaum about Charles Baxter’s “The Harmony of the World,” writing from the point of view of historical figures, and getting a fan letter from J.M. Coetzee.

In 2007, not long after the publication of Like You’d Understand, Anyway, Shepard had a conversation with Laura van den Berg about the liberties made possible by first person, the impulses informing confessionals (fictional or Catholic or both), the difficulty of omniscience, and the idea of “ethical passivity.” …more

Sometimes around dusk (I was probably six or seven years old), I would look out my bedroom window and see the sky turning orange and purple, and the setting sun turning red like blood, and I was sure the end of the world had come upon us …more

“I certainly hope we’re all writing about those things that matter most to us.”

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“All We Read Is Freaks,” by William Bowers, The Oxford American, January/February 2003, personal essay.

A community college professor tries to teach Emily Dickinson to his students at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida. …more

“In a few weeks, the international media will leave the country, and Americans will be free to forget about Haiti once again. It is my hope that this story will give American readers a glimpse into the lives of people I have come to love in Haiti. We must not forget them.” …more

“I generally don’t use tape recorders. I take notes and work from memory. You can use the tape recorder as an aide-memoire, but I can tell you that I have been doing this for thirty years, and I’ve never had anyone challenge a quote. …more

Lawrence Wechsler by David Hockney

“I generally don’t use tape recorders. I take notes and work from memory. You can use the tape recorder as an aide-memoire, but I can tell you that I have been doing this for thirty years, and I’ve never had anyone challenge a quote. And I never quote what people have actually said. I quote what people remember having said. I try to create a fair rendition of the point they were making in the spirit in which it was recounted.”

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