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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.
...moreI 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.
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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.
...more...moreI’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 of conceptual or transgressive literature.
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.
...moreToday 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.
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