NPR shares a six-page excerpt from Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel’s latest graphic memoir. Here’s a conversation between Bechdel and the Paris Review.

“There’s so much she hasn’t told me, and so many big obligatory questions that I didn’t touch on in this book. Like, what has it been like for my mother to live with the pain of her husband’s suicide? I can’t ask her that. I can’t even raise that question in the book, because that’s too painful. So in a way the book is constructed around these big gaping absences.”

William Dereseiwicz’s luminous response to Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre recently printed by the Library of America, is a critique as much as it is hero-worship.

Dereseiwicz confronts Vonnegut’s novels from his earliest to his last, focusing on Vonnegut’s zenith in moral seriousness and the long, personal road to Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut played around with his essential question, the elegantly put “What are people for?”, in his early work, though he then lacked the artistic and rhetorical strength of the novels to come. …more

For years when I was young I would crouch beneath the dinner table to watch my parents drink after-dinner coffee and wine with an ever-changing group of scientists—a tall man from Colombia whose mustache is even more impressive than my father’s, a shy Chinese man who twice brought me folded paper fans, a thin young woman from India with acetic hair who rarely speaks, but whose murmured jokes can pitch the group into laughter. …more

Granta interviews Tania James whose collection Aerogrammes and Other Stories is out this month. James discusses writing from a child’s perspective, scriptology, and the short form.

“Certainly novels can and should take risks but maybe I feel more freedom in the short story form because if it fails halfway in, I don’t feel an urge to toss myself out the window.”

No? Why not?

We’d like to know the last book you loved and why. Send us a writeup of the last book you truly loved — a little bit book review and a lot about why you loved it — along with a short bio. We’ll publish our favorites in The Rumpus blog. No length requirements, but please refrain from reviewing books written by people you know.

Email to: Marie AT therumpus.net

KCRW talks with Adam Levin about his latest collection of short stories, Hot Pink, behaviorism, the Marx brothers, strange sentences, and his affinity for big drama without sappiness.

(Via Electric Literature)

Episode 70 of Brad Listi’s Other People podcast features Emily St. John Mandel.

Mandel discusses the genesis of her new novel, The Lola Quartet (which was our April Rumpus Book Club selection), dual-citizenship, multi-genre books, and more.

“I had a cartoon in my high school newspaper magazine. Terrible, terrible shit.”

A sneak preview of The Comics Journal’s interview with Maurice Sendak.

Jen Vafidis’ Rumpus review of Threats won “Best Anointing” over at Electric Literature’s May Critical Hit Awards.

HORN! REVIEWS:
Leaving the Atocha Station

Another fantastic Rumpus Comic book review by Kevin Thomas.

Now That We Have Tasted Hope archives the “most important” primary source documents of the Arab Spring. Published by McSweeney’s and Byliner, and edited by Rumpus contributor Daniel Gumbiner, the book derives its title from Khaled Mattawa’s poem by the same name.

“From the harrowing accounts of tortured protesters to the hollow appeals of crumbling regimes and the triumphant songs of revolutionaries, these documents catalog the events of the Arab Spring in all its complexity and drama.”

The second episode of Late Night Conversation features Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay.

Listen in as Gay talks with guest host Karen Munro about emerging writers, publicizing her debut novel, and online journals.

Award-winning Newsday reporter Mike McGrady passed away on Sunday at 78. He was best known as the architect of a literary hoax, the 1969 collaborative novel, Naked Came the Stranger, which spent many weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

“As one of Newsday’s truly outstanding literary talents, you are hereby officially invited to become the co-author of a best-selling novel… There will be an unremitting emphasis on sex. Also, true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled into oblivion.”

Vol. 1 Brooklyn converses with Michael Robbins about his recently released poetry collection, Alien vs. Predator. Other topics of discussion include his hatred of Mississippi, Dadaism, suberversion in music, Occupy, and the police.

“The stuff that interests me is dangerous, and it’s not always designed to suggest the proper ameliorations, you know. Art is contradiction. It’s not something that’s going to conform to our nice, liberal values.”

The Outlet talks with Mike Doughty about this new memoir The Book of Drugs, medication, luck, Soul Coughing, and more.

“I don’t think active pain is necessarily useful. I don’t know what it’d be like if I was drawing from a [laughs] happy childhood, but I don’t feel like a false self. The first time I’d started taking drugs for depression – I didn’t know I was bipolar yet; this was before I’d gotten sober – my sexuality shut down.”

The 31^st Annual Northern California Book Awards will honor our own Paul Madonna with a Special Recognition Award for Everything Is Its Own Reward, An All Over Coffee Collection. 

The free ceremony will include readings by the award-winning authors, followed by a book signing and reception. June 10, 1:00-2:30 pm at San Francisco Main Library (100 Larkin Street). More info can be found here.

Meanwhile in England, a troupe of 24 modern day pilgrims re-enacted Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, walking the 1637 pilgrimage route and raising money for the National Literacy Trust.

The group stopped at the landmarks mentioned in the tale and each pilgrim told their assigned character’s story with full audience participation, anachronistic twists, and sock puppeteering; the bawdiest of which were audio-recorded. When all was said and done, the group had raised more than double their intended fund-raising goal, bringing in £10,500. Here taketh the makere of this blogpost his leve.

NYT Magazine asked writers and critics which novels deserved this year’s “lost” Pultizer Prize. DFW’s The Pale King was a repeat hypothetical winner.

“The Pale King, my favorite work of fiction from 2011, isn’t David Foster Wallace’s greatest novel; perhaps it isn’t even fully ‘his,’ given that it was edited and published after his death. But his name belongs in the canon.”

Library Journal interviews Cheryl Strayed about Tiny Beautiful Things, her forthcoming collection of Dear Sugar columns. Strayed reveals the best and worst advice she’s ever received. The best? From her mother: “Zap them back with super love.”

At Tin House, Rumpus contributor Courtney Maum introduces us to the writing habits of “highly effective writers.” Part-one features many people we love, including Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay and columnist Steve Almond.