Pirates, drugs, gay marriage. For realz.
See also Nashville Debate in Song and Dance.

Throw Down Your Heart, the new documentary by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and his filmmaker brother Sascha Paladino, follows Fleck on a musical heritage tour of Africa. …more

It seems that every once in a while living writers pick a dead writer to gather around and champion, and this was definitely the case with Richard Yates around the turn of the millenium. I attended a reading by Richard Ford, where he extolled Yates’s brilliance. Then I saw that Richard Russo had written a great introduction to the reissue of Revolutionary Road. (Something about that first name Richard?) Clearly Yates was a post-WWII voice to be reckoned with, and so I did what most first time readers of this poet of anomie do — I read the short stories and his first novel and considered myself an expert. …more

The Unrepentant Terrorist?

Founder of the Weather Underground, and favorite whipping boy of the failed McCain campaign, Bill Ayers talks to The Rumpus about the ’60s, the present, and his fans in the Chicago Police Department. …more

Glen Duncan’s new novel, A Day and a Night and a Day, is an intense and involving story of a man pressed violently against his own limitations. …more

In this Rumpus original, Steven Soderbergh talks to Stephen Elliott and Scott Hutchins about his shaken faith in the power of film, what he has in common with Fidel Castro, and how nothing will ever be solved in the Middle East as long as monotheists are involved.

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Going to See the Elephant, the debut novel by Rodes Fishburne, is a paean to newspapering and young love, by a writer whose ambition is worn lightly on his sleeve. It’s a fun book about being young in a new city, and introduces the reading public to a writer of great promise. …more