What to Read When You’re a Whiting Award Winner
The 2018 Whiting Awards winners share books that have inspired them, plus a giveaway!
...more
Posts Tagged: amy hempel
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Terese Mailhot
Terese Mailhot discusses her debut memoir, Heart Berries, writing candidly about one’s personal life, and the good that can come from anger.
...more
Scripting New Narratives: Mandy Len Catron’s How to Fall in Love with Anyone
I can’t help but wonder what if, in detangling love stories and our relationships to them, Catron is building yet another narrative—an anti-narrative, perhaps—of love.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
We’re halfway through June, and though the first day of summer isn’t technically until June 21, I think we can all agree that we’re well into the sweltering season. This week’s story captures those quintessential staples of summer—swimming pools, soft serve, bike rides, frozen Capri Suns—but it’s no typical poolside read. “We Were the Drowners” by […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Lee Clay Johnson
Lee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
...moreGirlhood Comes Home to Roost
I think I always knew this story about the rural road where I grew up needed to be told. At the Believer, Annie DeWitt talks to Brandon Hobson about realism, ambiguity, and how her own childhood folds into her new novel, White Nights in Split Town City, out in August from Tyrant Books. Guiding lights […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Rebecca Schiff
Rebecca Schiff discusses her debut collection The Bed That Moved, choosing narrators who share similarities with each other and with herself, and whether feminism and fiction-writing conflict.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #72: Urban Pastoral
It’s like a landscape that you can’t know until you’ve seen it through four seasons, until you’ve seen it on days gray and bright.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
...moreNotable NYC: 7/4–7/10
Saturday 7/4: Macy’s celebrates independence from the English King with fireworks. East River, 9 p.m., free. Monday 7/6: Tony Hoagland reads from Twenty Poems That Could Save America. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Tuesday 7/7: Julia Fierro celebrates the paperback release of Cutting Teeth, the comedic domestic drama about Brooklyn families on vacation. BookCourt, 7 p.m., […]
...moreCharacters Aren’t the Enemy
I’ll admit that I was so into sentence construction when I started working with Amy that I had zero interest in character development. Hempel subtly persuaded me, partially through introducing me to radical prose stylists who also care about their characters, that pathos in fiction is not an outmoded concept and is not the enemy […]
...more
The Last Book I Loved: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I couldn’t wait to read it, but I was also infinitely patient. It’s that delayed gratification thing. I’m a sucker for it, and there are books that are worth the wait.
...moreWrite Your Worst Secret
Amy Hempel started writing fiction in her late twenties when she took a workshop with Gordon Lish at Columbia; she stayed in this workshop as a student for years. In an interview with The Paris Review, Hempel recalls her first class meeting with Lish: students were asked to write their worst secret. By exploring the […]
...moreHappy Birthday, Amy Hempel
Today is the brilliant Amy Hempel’s birthday! Check out this interview with her on Café Americain, where she praises Rumpus pals Steve Almond and Sheila Heti, and for means of celebration, read (or reread) her glorious short story The Harvest.
...more