January’s Rumpus Book Club selection is Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, by Diane Williams. This 2008 Believer interview with Williams is not to be missed.

“I said that literature ought not to be the haven for tea time conversation, for polite speech—that most of us are nearly obliterated by all of our opportunities for polite speech, that without the resources of dreams and literature—and psychoanalysis for the lucky few—the consequences are surely dire.”

We are excited to announce that this month’s Rumpus Book Club selection is Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty by Diane Williams. You can get a sneak peek of four of the book’s stories over at McSweeney’s. Join the Book Club to get in on the action and read all fifty short stories, which “hum with tension, each one so taut that it threatens to snap and send the whole thing sprawling.”