The Rumpus Interview with Paula Whyman
Paula Whyman discusses her debut collection You May See a Stranger, discovering truth in fiction, and how memory interferes with good storytelling. ...more
Posts Tagged: memory
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Night
With these young women, I no longer slip in and out of places undetected. With them, my cloak of invisibility—my only known superpower—has been removed. ...more
Hashtag at the Wedding
For The Hairpin, Ella Riley-Adams delves into the phenomenon of the wedding hashtag, and the ways we control and shape the narrative around crucial life milestones.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Heirlooms
The strings of our DNA mark us as one, but it’s the roots of our memories that bind us. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Losing at Memory
But I didn’t understand, then, how important memory is, for how do we know who we are without memory? How does anyone else know who we are, but for their memories of us? ...more
Spotlight: “Migraine Couch” by Allyson Hoffman
“Migraine Couch” reflects how daily life and memory are shaped by chronic illness. ...more
Living with False Memories
For Pacific Standard, Ed Cara explores the malleability of memory and the very real and frequent occurrence of false memories, via new work by criminal psychologist and memory scientist Dr. Julia Shaw.
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The Healing Magic of Baseball
In that favorite summer of my memory, Mom is perched on the edge of the rickety folding chair in box seats that the team manager reserved for us. ...more
The Rumpus Review of The Narrow Door by Paul Lisicky
If we’re honest with ourselves, the great loves of our lives are often platonic. ...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Suit
It was as if he understood that the authentic must begin in the voice. And through the texture of the voice—its moral and psychological claims—sensory details emerge with absolute authority. ...more
Remaking Historical Memory
For JSTOR Daily, Ellen C. Caldwell examines historical “memory-making” and our changing interpretations of historical events over time. Caldwell focuses on the 1746 Battle of Culloden, a battle that ended the Jacobite Uprising and decisively transformed the British monarchy and Scottish Highland culture.
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This Is Not a Story About a Ghost
This is a story about memory. About neurons misfiring, about the strange space between dream and awake, that feeling, when I’m falling asleep, of falling backwards, swinging my arms up to catch myself. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Kill Shot
1964, a month prior to the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a different home movie shot. Infant toss. Up-down. Plummeting. I’m ten months of age—picking up speed. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Keith Lee Morris
Keith Lee Morris discusses his latest book Traveler’s Rest, Lewis and Clark, and how writing a novel about dreams requires much more than sleep. ...more
A Portable James Baldwin
...moreI came to her place to take a picture of Baldwin’s typewriter. This is what I told her. But I think I also came because I wanted to see someone who is his flesh and blood. I wanted to see that he was really theirs, their Uncle Jimmy.
The Truth about Memory
...moreOnce I decided I wasn’t going to stop if I flinched, I figured I was opening myself up to some hard stuff. So, when it came, I kind of expected it. Maybe some of the beautiful moments of my life surprised me.
The Rumpus Interview with Rob Roberge
Rob Roberge talks about his new memoir, Liar, the differences between writing fiction and writing memoir, and why every narrator is an unreliable narrator. ...more
There Is No Such Thing as a True Story
Perspective is a fickle beast, and memory is an unreliable traveling companion through the years. ...more
Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from Rob Roberge’s Liar
Rob Roberge's new memoir, Liar, is out February 9 from Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. ...more
Do You Remember That Thing?
Where do our words go when we lose them? Jenny Diski embarks on an exploration into vanishing vocabulary:
...moreSo I had a thought about writing a book for the elderly, the old. Those who have lost their words more comprehensively than the friends around our lunch table, but haven’t lost themselves entirely.
I Hear the Place That Can’t Be Named
It is remembering and loving anyway—not forgetting—that binds us even if the recollections are absurd, undignified, cruel, or humiliating. ...more
Writing Memory
...moreI think we all live in different ways. Some people don’t look back; some people dwell on the past. They are surrounded by mementos and pictures of the past. Other people don’t want to do that. It really depends on who you are.
The Rumpus Interview with Mira Ptacin
Author Mira Ptacin discusses her memoir Poor Your Soul, what inspires her to write, motherhood, and why she considers her beat “the uterus and the American Dream.” ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Sweetest Kidnapping
[S]ometimes you don’t know you’re experiencing a fairytale until years later. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Debra Monroe
Debra Monroe talks about her new memoir, My Unsentimental Education, the future of the genre, and how the Internet has changed what it means to be human. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Catalina
Think back to crossing Santa Monica Bay with your husband, unaware that you are pregnant. You’ll suspect it later, when one night all you want for dinner is pie, the next only sparkling water and toast. ...more
Proof of Passage
The scrutiny left me angry and exposed. We know; we are not whole. The unraveling was so slow; we were each undone, stitch by stitch. ...more
Make/Work Episode 36: Abeer Hoque
In Episode 36 of The Rumpus’s Make/Work podcast, Scott Pinkmountain speaks with author and photographer Abeer Hoque about her long journey to publication, and her obsession with memory and nostalgia. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Song in the Subjunctive
Perhaps the city looked more poignantly lovely because I was conscious of its tragic history. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Patrick O’Neil
Patrick O'Neil talks about his debut memoir Gun Needle Spoon, being big in France, the drug/recovery genre, and writing through trauma. ...more