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From Stephen Elliott
Michelle Tea talks with Bustle about her new memoir How to Grow Up, motherhood, Botox, and what it’s like to write about things being good:
...moreIt’s the first time I’ve ever worked on a piece of writing where I’m writing about things being kind of great.
Photographer Lynsey Addario is profiled by the Columbia Journalism Review; the piece highlights her work as a voice for Pakistani refugees, US marines, and Syrian war casualties—all while balancing her life as a mom:
...moreThe photo of the Syrian teenager with the baby captures exactly the kind of moment that Addario claims to grasp more fully now that she is a mother herself.
Kristina Marie Darling’s poetry collection, Fortress, is “image-rich” and wonderfully allusive. The setting is the famously decadent palace of Versailles. Like the film Marie Antoinette, “Darling’s book is simultaneously excess and desolation,” writes Sandra Marchetti. White spaces are used strategically in this “lush” book of poems.
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In the Sunday Interview, Anna March talks with Robin Black about her debut novel, Life Drawing. Black—who also received acclaim for her short story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This—begins by discussing her approach to writing character.
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At Buzzfeed, Rumpus Sunday Editor Gina Frangello writes about the complicated relationship between women, mothers, writing and sex:
...moreI’m not really sure how our culture has arrived at the mutually exclusive relationship between Motherhood and Sexuality, especially since in most cases, women become mothers by having sex.
On this weekend in 1652, a law was passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies. Turns out that particular law didn’t cause much of a stir.
Unfortunately, some of today’s legislation intended to protect marginalized groups isn’t faring much better.
...moreIn her deeply personal essay on The Millions, Allison K. Gibson explains some of the intense literary cravings she experienced during her pregnancy. Some of them were unexpected, even violent, but all were led entirely by intuition.
...more“Now I had a voracious appetite to consume certain books I’d read long ago, revisiting passages that had always been especially moving.
Over at BuzzFeed, Rumpus contributor Julie Greicius interviews Rumpus Sunday Editor Gina Frangello about her new novel A Life in Men, the special bonds we form in adolescence, and why moms can still write about sex. Take a peek:
...moreI’m not really sure how our culture has arrived at the mutually exclusive relationship between Motherhood and Sexuality, especially since in most cases, women become mothers by having sex.
Writer Ariel Levy offers a heart-wrenching account of adventure and coming into motherhood in her essay called “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” featured in The New Yorker.
...morePeople were alarmed when I told them where I was going, but I was pleased with myself.
It was a cool, blue morning in Baghdad. I stood in the rubble of a bombed out building, a shell of what it had once been.
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It’s two in the morning on the OB ward. Light filters into our dark room from the hallway, making a dim twilight around bassinet and bed. My first child, Emily, is twenty-seven hours old.
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I refused to listen to the B-side. This was, I guess, an extension or reflection of the poverty of those years after leaving my marriage and buying the 10 Willie Nelson records at a small town Goodwill store for 10 cents each– a kind of hoarding of every meager resource, like the unopened cans of beans, moved from kitchen to kitchen, state to state.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be around while one of my best friends gave birth to a baby boy. It was an amazing experience. As a result, unfortunately, I had to spend a lot of time at SF General.
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Joanna Smith Rakoff’s debut novel follows a group of friends through the trials and triumphs of post-college life in New York.