An Erasure of Distance: Traveling in Circles with Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander talks about his new novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, the experience of being interviewed, and why he believes books can save lives. ...more
Posts Tagged: motherhood
Visitations: Gwendolyn Brooks at One Hundred
A visitation is how I describe the past weeks walking with Gwendolyn Books. It is like she is just around every corner. ...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #100: Jennifer Colville
From the tender age of eight, Jennifer Colville has known herself to be a visual artist. ...more
A Magpie for the Lord
What would it be like to not be us? We were trying to figure out so much about the world then, and this is something we could never get to the bottom of. ...more
The Butt Song
Last night as my husband got ready to go out [my daughter] grabbed his coat and said, “Call 1-900-Mix-A-Lot and kick those nasty thoughts.” ...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
Love Thy Neighbor: Talking with Yewande Omotoso
Writer, poet, and architect Yewande Omotoso discusses her second novel, The Woman Next Door, Cape Town’s haunting beauty, and mythologies about motherhood. ...more
Radiant with Terror: Lowell and the Uncertain Country of Love
I found comfort in the way that Lowell’s poems frequently explore the landscape of mental illness and blur the lines between the self and the world. ...more
Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from Alice Anderson’s Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away
His goal was to erase me.
...more
Finding the Finally: Alice Anderson Discusses Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away
Alice Anderson on her memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, drag, and motherhood. ...more
Voices on Addiction: Keys
He wasn’t an alcoholic! He was just British. I was starting to think that this bullet was long past being dodged. ...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Iris Dunkle
Iris Jamahl Dunkle on her new collection Interrupted Geographies, writing against the pastoral tradition, the power of persona poems, and the town of Pithole. ...more
Death, Memory, and Other Superpowers
There was no cedar chest filled with tissue-wrapped rattles, handprint art projects, and bronzed baby shoes. Our parents never spoke of our missing sister. ...more
As Long as What Is Said Is Understood: Talking with Lesley Nneka Arimah
Lesley Nneka Arimah discusses her debut collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, mother-daughter relationships, and the pleasures of genre fiction. ...more
Staying Syncretic: A Conversation with Kool A.D.
Kool A.D. discusses his debut novel, OK, the war on drugs, systemic destruction of left-leaning movements by the government, and the inability to escape American capitalism. ...more
Navigating Empathy: Camille T. Dungy’s Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History
Luckily for us, Dungy’s increase in empathy and experience coincides with her embrace of the braided essay: her thinking crashes people, places, and ideas against each other in unexpected and adventurous ways. ...more
Making a Narrative in the Darkness: A Conversation with Samantha Hunt
Samantha Hunt discusses her new collection, The Dark Dark, why she became a writer, and the freeing quiet of darkness. ...more
The Gate of Permission: A Conversation with Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel discusses her newest novel, Before Everything, living through and beyond grief, and why she loves secrets. ...more
The Aura of Baby Einstein, the Child, the Toy
If there is no distinction between show and commercial, ethics and entertainment, what kind of distinctions, if any, exists between her imaginary play, her consumer life, and our reality? ...more
Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jessica Berger Gross
Jessica Berger Gross discusses her new memoir, Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home, walking away from her parents age of twenty-eight, and the importance of boundaries. ...more
Voices on Addiction: Shame Is a Treble Hook
Shame is a treble hook that tells me that 1) I not only fail but am a failure, that 2) I not only damage people but I am damaged, and that 3) I not only lie but I am a lie. ...more
Ten Minutes of Motherhood: A Conversation with Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy on The Rules Do Not Apply, the illusion of control, and language’s inability to express grief. ...more
Grief Is Not Regret: May Cause Love by Kassi Underwood
When women do not want a pregnancy, we may not experience the marvel and awe some claim are instant and “natural”—or, if we do, they are overshadowed by fear, and grief. ...more
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Lisa Factora-Borchers
Lisa Factora-Borchers talks about being a Catholic feminist, writing across genres, and pushing back against a singular narrative about New York. ...more
Embrace the Physical World: Touch by Courtney Maum
Touch is a compelling argument that we should embrace the physical world, genuine human connections, and reject the technology that comes between us and other people. ...more
This Week in Short Fiction
For the rest of this month, Granta will be publishing the winners of the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, awarded to five writers from five regions of the globe, with the mission to connect storytellers across cultures through the power of fiction.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Amy Benson
Our American obsession with the personal and individual has made us the tremendous resource consumers we are in the world. ...more
Multitudes: (Re) Writing Mother
I like to listen to my mother’s voice; the sounds she makes in an English-Korean mashup; we are each the other’s dictionary. ...more
On Grief and Inheritance: A Conversation with Brionne Janae
The poet Brionne Janae discusses her debut poetry collection After Jubilee, intergenerational trauma, and writing her way into historical personae. ...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #85: Elizabeth Metzger
I have known the poet Elizabeth Metzger since kindergarten—and ever since I have known her, she has been a poet. When we played the The Game of Life, a board game, she wrote small lyrics about the futures we ended the game with; when I had a crush, she wrote light verse about the boys I swooned over; when I was reading Redwall and Lord of the Rings, she was reading Emily Dickinson.
...more