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From Stephen Elliott
Poet, memoirist, and Beat figure Hettie Jones is, like most of us, unhappy about sexism in the publishing industry.
In a blog post on the subject, she discusses VIDA statistics, Deborah Copaken Kogan’s Nation essay, and (drumroll!) Elissa Bassist’s amazing Funny Women essay “Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel.”
Jones calls Bassist’s humor “indelible” and ties it into the “frustratingly sad” larger picture.
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A lot of women people (as opposed to men people, or just “people”) are upset that Wikipedia editors have created a subcategory for “American Women Novelists.” But I’m not.
...moreThe disparity of women writers in the publishing world has been an increasingly hot topic of late.
Flavorwire has compiled a list entitled “10 Women Who Should be Writing for ‘Harper’s,” and we’re excited that three of the women are our own essays editor Roxane Gay, Dear Sugar’s Cheryl Strayed, and Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist!
...moreThe Equals Record asks Funny Women editor (and writer/motherfucker) Elissa Bassist what she’s reading offline.
She responds with a whole shelf’s worth of books, from David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest to fellow funny woman Tina Fey’s autobiographical comedy Bossypants.
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The next Letter in the Mail, going out this Friday, is from Elissa Bassist.
Elissa Bassist is the editor of our Funny Women column. Her writing has appeared here on The Rumpus, in The New York Times, NYMag.com, The Paris Review Daily, The Daily Beast, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Salon, Creative Nonfiction, and most recently in Get Out of My Crotch, a collection of twenty-one writers responding to America’s war on women’s rights and reproductive health.
...moreWe all have these feelings inside us—anxiety, fear, trepidation, hope, desire—and our every effort becomes getting these things out. Writing that letter to you and publishing it was how I felt connected and compassionate.
Two and a half years ago, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist wrote a letter seeking advice from our Sugar.
...moreRumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist writes for NY Mag about her experience with sexual violence, and the difficulty of finding language — as an individual and as a culture — to conceive of and communicate sexual trauma both in the moment and after the fact.
...moreIn a thought-provoking Daily Beast essay about Daniel Tosh’s “rape joke” at the Laugh Factory, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist clarifies the distinction between using humor “to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation” and making a joke to humiliate, threaten, or assert power over another person.
...moreRumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist rocks the New York Times Modern Love column.
“That online conversation was our last. Once he signed off, he was gone for good. At that moment, those children we had planned died, or were never born, or could have been born if things had gone differently.
...moreJeanette Winterson has the best-named memoir: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She spoke about the story behind the title during her reading at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC:
...moreWhen Jeanette W. was fifteen, she fell in love with another girl and couldn’t hide it.
Are you trying to write today but feeling distracted/unmotivated/lonely? If so, perfect. We’re taking “Write Like a Motherfucker,” Dear Sugar’s #48 column one step beyond…
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Even though I’m Jewish, I never went to summer camp.
Feministing, the esteemed online feminist community, highlighted our very own Elissa Bassist’s interview with sex-positive feminist Susie Bright (which is still very smart and very funny, if you haven’t dabbled yet).
Thanks for the shout-out, Feministing. The love is mutual!
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Susie Bright, sex-positive feminist, writer, revolutionary, and my first tongue-kiss with a woman recently released her memoir Big Sex Little Death.
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Some advice for writers from our own Elissa Bassist:
[Some of this is stolen. But I won’t tell you what because I want to impress you.]
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Elissa Bassist shares her personal notes after having a conversation with Jennifer Egan:
The Rumpus Women, Vol. I contributors have been on tour. We’ve read in bookstores, bars, and family rooms in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Denver. The readings have been awe-inspiring: smart, funny, charming, sad, honest, brave.
In case you couldn’t make a reading or live in Iowa, Rumpus Women will be on Firedoglake Book Salon, an online news site that hosts author discussions every Saturday and Sunday.
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Loads of people have slept with authors or well-read individuals, but what would it be like to sleep with a book?
A hearty bonjour and aloha to all you lovers of arts & letters,
I may be old-fashioned, but I prefer not to keep a day job when the winsome muse of words calls to me, so I will be seeking a patron for the next 6 months to 10 years, depending on how long it takes to birth this literary love child.
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Not only are women not funny, but also they don’t know anything about music. Verify this:
Scientists have identified the gene that inclines individuals toward excessive Post-It use. Three out of five British women misread the word “aviator” as “vibrator” after prolonged exposure to violent news broadcasts. Non-mammalian school mascots were associated with lower student body morale.
“Feeling down? Make a Self-Esteem Shell Collage! Write a poem on a piece of paper about you and the ocean and about how you feel about the ocean and why you are special and of course the ocean and then surround the poem with whatever shells you collected that day so you will always remember it.
Two funny women interviewed each other about their lives. They also happen to be sisters. They were raised like twins, best friends, by a hovering, yet distracted Jewish mother and a drama-and-opera-prone psychiatrist father.
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE RUMPUS WOMEN, VOL. I!
We’re delighted to present the introduction to the first and most extraordinary book ever published by The Rumpus.
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At the end of The Social Network, a new indie flick that no one has ever heard of, I turned to my friend, and out of every intelligent comment I could have made, I said, “There was so much testosterone in the movie that I feel fucked six ways sideways.”
Notes I took on what Lorrie Moore said while in conversation with Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker‘s fiction editor, that I felt selfish keeping to myself:
How to become a writer:
-You can’t carve solitude out of loneliness–you need people to get away from them.
One woman’s search for everything across India, Iran, and Iceland… excerpts from my extraordinary upcoming novel of self-discovery:
Dear Sugar,
I write like a girl. I write about my lady life experiences, and that usually comes out as unfiltered emotion, unrequited love, and eventual discussion of my vagina as metaphor.
And that’s when I can write, which doesn’t happen to be true anymore.
...more“I really believe that most writers in America have taken on this idea that we’re never going to get paid–and so we accept so little for what we do, when what we do is so valuable. And it’s wanted.” –Ali Liebegott
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