The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado discusses her debut story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, her favorite horror writers and movies, and writing the book(s) she's always wanted to read. ...more
Posts Tagged: Book Club
Why I Chose Barbara Jane Reyes’s Invocation to Daughters for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
A look at next month's Poetry Book Club selection. Subscribe today! ...more
What We’re Reading in November!
No one was prepared for the massive earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, taking over a quarter-million lives, and leaving millions more homeless. ...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Transit Books
The founders of Transit Books discuss Wioletta Greg's debut novel, Swallowing Mercury, and the challenges and rewards that come with starting a small independent press. ...more
What We’re Reading in October!
RESERVOIR 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a stranger’s tragedy refuse to subside. ...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna discusses New People, inhabiting her characters without judging them, playing with the reality and surreality of identity, and pushing against traditional story arcs. ...more
What We’re Reading in September!
We are thrilled to share that our September Book Club selection is Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press, October 2017)!
In this highly anticipated debut collection, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
...moreGet Your Signed Copy of Roxane Gay’s Hunger Today!
Through August 15, purchase a yearly Letters in the Mail subscription or a 6-month Rumpus Book Club subscription and we’ll send you your own signed, hardcover copy of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by bestselling author—and Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus and Advisory Board member—Roxane Gay!
...moreWhat We’re Reading in August!
We’re thrilled to announce that our August Book Club selection is Wioletta Greg’s Swallowing Mercury!
In this celebrated debut from the prize-winning poet, Wiola looks back on her youth in a close-knit, agricultural community in 1980s Poland. Her memories are precise, intense, distinctive, sensual: a playfulness and whimsy rise up in the gossip of the village women, rumored visits from the Pope, and the locked room in the dressmaker’s house, while political unrest and predatory men cast shadows across this bright portrait.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby discusses her new essay collection, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, all that comes along with writing about your life, and reading great horror books. ...more
What We’re Reading in July!
We’re super excited to share that our July Book Club selection is New People by Danzy Senna! From the bestselling author of Caucasia, New People is a subversive and engrossing novel about race, class, and manners in contemporary America. Heartbreaking and darkly comic, New People is a bold and unfettered page-turner that challenges our every assumption about how we define one another, and ourselves.
Why I Chose Erika L. Sánchez’s Lessons on Expulsion for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
Before I tell you more, a quick reminder that in order to receive your copy of Lessons on Expulsion, read along with the Poetry Book Club, and participate in our exclusive chat with Erika, you’ll need to to subscribe by May 20!
...moreWhat We’re Reading in June!
We’re excited to share that our June Book Club pick is The Tower of the Antilles by Achy Obejas! The Cubans in Obejas’s new story collection are haunted by an island: the island they fled, the island they’ve created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, the writers and books that influenced it, tackling addiction with compassion, and the magic of teenage girls. ...more
What We’re Reading in May!
We’re thrilled to share that our May Book Club pick is We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby! Samantha is the author of Meaty: Essays and creator of the blog “bitches gotta eat.” The essays in We Are Never Meeting in Real Life span topics as varied as living on a budget, explaining why Irby should be the next Bachelorette, a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, and advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms.
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses her new book Abandon Me, choosing to be celibate for six months, letting go of our own mythologies, and the sexist reaction women receive when they write nonfiction. ...more
Why I Chose When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities for April’s Poetry Book Club
I am drawn to poetry about the difficulties of family, about the pain of feeling one is a disappointment to their parents, about the sense of separation that can come as a result. Chen Chen’s debut collection is filled with work which explores this universe.
...moreWhat We’re Reading in March!
We’re very excited to share that our March Book Club pick is Marlena, the debut novel from Julie Buntin. Marlena tells the story of a powerful teenage friendship between two girls, and its aftermath. Edan Lepucki, author of the bestselling novel California, writes:
...moreIn Marlena, Julie Buntin revitalizes a classic story making it all her own with sensuous, vibrant prose and a narrator who feels deeply even as she feints certain painful truths about herself.
Signifying Nothing
Shakespeare’s texts are anything but stagnant, often taking on new meanings depending on the context in which they’re experienced. In an excerpt from The Maximum Security Book Club, Mikita Brottman describes her experience of teaching Shakespeare in a maximum security prison:
...moreI like to stay open to misreadings.
Coming to the Rumpus Book Clubs in June
The Rumpus Book Clubs have been around for over six years now and they remain unique in a couple of important ways. First, we only feature pre-release books—that is, books that haven’t gone on sale yet, so you’re getting copies before anyone else (sometimes before the authors receive their personal copies!).
...moreLemon-Drizzled Cakes Bring J.K. Rowling to Your Book Club
There are no shortages of serendipitous tales of celebrities meeting up with their average-Joe fans through something as small as a Twitter exchange. For one library in Scotland, an exchange of teasing Twitter messages led to J.K. Rowling making an actual appearance for a book club covering her book The Cuckoo’s Calling (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith).
...moreThe Numbers Are In
When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to launch a book club, book publishers were hoping the billions of Facebook users would translate into book sales. But the numbers are in, and Zuckerberg is no Oprah: BetaBoston reports that though The End of Power sold out on Amazon, it only sold 13,000 copies.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh talks about her book McGlue, inventing a character from an 1850s newspaper article, and revisiting her work years after she finished writing it. ...more
Announcing the Rumblr Book Club!
The Rumblr is combining two of the best things on the Internet: The Rumpus Book Club and Tumblr. So, for those of you who (unimaginably) have yet to subscribe to the official club, you can get your feet wet with us on your dashboard.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Hilton Als
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Hilton Als about his new collection White Girls, an intriguing amalgam of fiction, essay, and memoir. ...more
Book Club Love
In a post titled “The New Golden Age of Online Book Clubs,” Flavorwire shouts out the Rumpus Book Club as one of many sites using new technology to recreate the age-old pleasure of talking about books.
(For an example of the joys of our book club, see today’s chat with Matthew Specktor, whose novel American Dream Machine book club subscribers got to read before it came out in bookstores.)
Thanks, Flavorwire, we love you back!
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Discussion with Ru Freeman
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Ru Freeman about On Sal Mal Lane, war as seen through children's eyes, and Sinhalese cuss words. ...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat With D. A. Powell
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with D.A. Powell about his poetry collection Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys. ...more
December’s Rumpus Book Club Selection
The Rumpus Book Club is proudly presenting Treasure Island!!!, Sara Levine’s debut novel as our December pick.
“The story of a ferocious obsession,” Treasure Island!!! chronicles a college graduate’s fateful reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island,” and the adventures that follow.
...moreThe Rumpus Book Club Interviews Adam Levin
The Rumpus Book Club talks with Adam Levin about The Instructions, Bar Mitzvahs, thinking you’re the Messiah, and what it’s like to publish a 1,000+ page book.