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
Posts Tagged: motherhood
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
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Raising A Feminist Son
I think about the birth of Mosley, and all of the dreams I already have for him at the ripe age of one. I know how I want him to see me—strong, smart, capable of anything and everything. This is how I want him to see all women, but me especially. ...more
The Eternal Hunt for Relevance: Doree Shafrir Discusses Startup
Doree Shafrir discusses her debut novel, Startup, the differences between journalism and fiction, and why she chose to tell this particular story. ...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #83: Lauren Grodstein
After writing several books (A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything) from a male point of view, Lauren Grodstein’s new novel, Our Short History, is an intimate glimpse into a woman’s life, at a critical juncture between life and death.
...more
TORCH: Blood Trauma
But still: A pattern. The trauma had been diluted by time. But, it was still present, still discernible, in my blood. ...more
Back to the Places I’ve Left
“No one knows how to handle it,” I tell her, but I can see she’s angry and I’m speaking into the wind. ...more
Reading across Cultures: A Conversation with Ratika Kapur
Ratika Kapur discusses her latest book, The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma, the disappointing romance of affairs, and how people carry on after doing the unthinkable. ...more
Breaking the Binaries: A Conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch discusses her new novel, Book of Joan, a reimagining of the Joan of Arc story set in a terrifying future where the heroine has emerged to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed. ...more
The Day the FBI Tapped Our Phones
I held an image in my mind of my daughter and me in a small rowboat and I’m rowing, rowing, rowing as hard as I can, away from this sinking ship. ...more
What It Means to Hold and Be Held in Jennifer Givhan’s Protection Spell
The book explores ambiguities—in terms of race, in terms of motherhood, but especially in terms of the body and the subconscious. ...more
Mothers of My Diaspora
It paralyzes me to think about the sacrifices my family made before I was in my mother’s womb. When they came here they knew they would lose a part of their language, their memories, their sanctity of self. ...more
Corinne Lee and Finding an Antidote to America’s Toxicity
Poet Corinne Lee on writing her epic book-length poem Plenty and finding new ways to live in a rapidly changing world. ...more
The Evolution of a Trigger
Perhaps they are really saying: This will not happen to me. I will be prepared. And, in hoisting that hypothetical gun, they feel they are made safe from the appalling vulnerability of living. ...more
This Week in Short Fiction
This week, a woman mysteriously becomes pregnant with a lizard egg in a short story at Guernica that is weird, funny, and surprisingly sweet. By Benjamin Schaefer, Prose Editor of Fairy Tale Review, “Lizard-Baby” explores themes of motherhood, difference, and community, and all through the fresh new lens of immaculate lizard-birth.
...more
A Way to Make Sense of the World with Suzanne Buffam
Poet Suzanne Buffam discusses her latest work, A Pillow Book, sleep remedies that don’t work, and the worries that occupy her mind and keep her from sleep. ...more