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From Stephen Elliott
If you like your detectives hardboiled and your femmes fatale, you’ll dig Flavorwire’s list of ten essential neo-noir authors.
From Dennis Lehane (author of Shutter Island and Mystic River) to Lindsay Hunter (the heir apparent to Mary Gaitskill’s throne), these writers incorporate elements of mystery and horror without letting the strictures of genre limit them.
...moreRoxane Gay isn’t just for adults.
Rookie Mag’s online issue, currently themed “Age of Innocence,” just posted the new(ish — the original was published in Prairie Schooner) beautiful story on teenage love and two different “first” times. So far the teen press can’t stop raving: “This is taking me forever to read because it’s so good I keep pausing so I can save the rest for later.
...moreIf you’re looking for a token of solace after the Boston marathon bombings, please check out Roxane Gay’s words if you haven’t already. And Thomas Page McBee reflects on ways to help when feeling helpless.
At the Guardian, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond comments on the histrionic attitude the media has taken on in the wake of the explosions, and wonders if “events such as Monday’s bombing can somehow morally enlarge us as a nation, can help us imagine the suffering of other people and our own duty to those people – wherever they happen to live.”
Boston.com’s Metro Desk eulogizes Martin William Richard, the 8-year old who was killed.
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What wearies me is how often I have found myself stunned and silent in recent years. What especially wearies me is having such a finely honed vocabulary for tragedy.
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Both Yuknavitch and Scarboro, whose books echo each other in interesting ways, were willing to talk with me about this question of what to do with memoir, and much more.
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Jim Gavin is a talented writer who allows his stories the room they need to be told. These are stories that are intelligent and quiet and moving, stories that take up time and space in satisfying ways.
...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!
...moreIf you weren’t lucky enough to make it to AWP this year, never fear. Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay has a summary of her time in Boston that will make you feel like you were really there. A preview:
...moreThis woman walked up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Amy,” and I think I said hi and shook her hand and then continued with the photo shoot.
Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay has a short story up on WNYC’s Selected Shorts!
The episode summary describes it thusly:
...moreThe heroine of Roxane Gay’s “North Country” is a young woman from Florida adjusting to the harsh winter in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which she describes as a move to “the edge of nowhere.” She is recovering from a bad love affair, and is slow to trust.
Last night’s Oscar ceremony and some of the commentary around the ceremony make the best possible case for why diversity matters.
...more“There is no shame in writing slow. Your writing takes as long to develop as it takes. Writing is not a race.”
Click through to read this and other gentle reminders about writing from Roxane Gay. You’ll feel better about yourself, we promise.
...more“There is a tendency to place the center of the writing universe in New York City. This is understandable—countless writers live there. Have you heard about this magical place called Brooklyn? The media certainly has.”
If you needed another reminder that New York isn’t the only place with an exciting literary scene, Roxane Gay’s Tin House essay “A Literary Flyover” will do nicely.
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We are crying out for change, for a mental health care system that can truly help the people who soothe their inner torment by reaching for weapons of such destruction. We are crying out for gun control laws that, at the very least, make it more difficult for such tragedies to occur.
...moreBy now, you’ve probably seen plenty end-of-the-year reading suggestions, but have you seen Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay’s end-of-the-year reading suggestions?
It’s huge and rambling and dominated by women and divided into categories like “Books not normally in my wheelhouse that I still appreciated” and “Books I wanted to hate but couldn’t because game recognize game.”
Go splash around in it for a while.
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M. Bartley Seigel has a presence that fills a room. It is no surprise, then, that the prose poems in his debut collection, This Is What They Say, fill the page with a raw sense of place and longing, an undercurrent of anger and adulation
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We don’t know how to talk about children anymore. We get so wrapped up in these shallow narratives about children being preternaturally advanced, about little girls wearing make up and dressing provocatively and seducing the camera, about little girls maturing faster, developing sooner. We forget.
...moreAfter Chris Brown’s inventively profane online spat with comedian Jenny Johnson and his subsequent departure from Twitter, the public is left to wonder once again just how Brown’s actions fit into the ways our society views race, gender, and abuse.
Luckily, Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay has written a Tumblr post breaking it all down for us:
“Chris Brown continues to face backlash because he continues to remind us that he is an asshole.
...moreThis dovetails nicely with Roxane Gay’s post about writers of color: a list of writers of color who are also queer.
“I thought, I’m sure I can come up with 50 books by LGBT people of color,” writes the post’s author.
...moreThe publishing industry is battling the Internet again.
Or publishing stepped on the Internet’s foot and refuses to apologize. Or Maria Popova wanted to use more than three pictures in a post about My Ideal Bookshelf and Little, Brown said no.
...more“In line in the cafeteria, at his favorite table in the library, on the last block before the block he lives on, the inside of Boy’s head is one blank notebook page after another.”
At Guernica, Roxane Gay guest-edited Rumpus contributor Saeed Jones’s short story “Boy, A History”, a bleak tale of one high schooler’s plight in discovering his sexuality.
...moreOver on The Millions, Thea Lim takes an analytical look at Junot Díaz and his book, This Is How You Lose Her, shedding some light on the reactions it has inspired, from the accolades and awards, to feminist criticism and the influence of race.
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Discussions about gender are often framed as either/or propositions. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or so we are told, as if this means we’re all so different it is nigh impossible to reach each other.
...moreThe last of the presidential debates is on tonight. Before gearing yourself up for that, check out these two great essays we published over the weekend:
“If we can’t see the reality we wish, we simply manufacture it. We supply the demand.”
Roxane Gay deconstructs our fascination with the revelation of the self.
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The next Letter In The Mail, going out this Friday, is from Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay!
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Our essays editor surveys new novels and collections — coming-of-age tales, journeys, and love stories — and looks ahead to forthcoming works.
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Certain constituencies are always shoved aside, always told their issues will be addressed at some nebulous point in the future. During a lengthy debate, to see these issues merit neither discussion nor debate speaks to how little dignity is valued on the political stage.
...more“It’s okay if most of your friends are guys but if you champion this as a commentary on the nature of female friendships, well, soul search a little.”
Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay has created a helpful guide/manifesto on friendship between women.
...more“I’m a little tired of cynicism. It’s just so easy to be cynical—and there are plenty of reasons to be cynical, and I have my very cynical moments—but in terms of my writing and the stuff that I put out into the world, I just think, you know, let’s be honest.
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There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath but I don’t believe in trigger warnings.
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Roxane Gay talks with Karolina Waclawiak about her new novel, How to Get into the Twin Palms, the displacement of being from different worlds, loneliness, and Los Angeles.
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