The Woman Behind the Curtain Pulling the Levers: Talking with Zinzi Clemmons
Zinzi Clemmons on What We Lose, representations of blackness, and life’s influences on writing.
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Posts Tagged: writers of color
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Faith Adiele
Faith Adiele discusses what it means to be a good literary citizen, the importance of decolonizing travel writing, and how she wants to change the way Black stories are being told.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura
Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #81: Chanelle Benz
Chanelle Benz’s debut collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, is filled with characters often facing a moral crossroads. The stories contain the unexpected, like a classic Western complete with local brothel as well as a gothic tale. Benz’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, The American Reader, and Granta.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas discusses her debut novel, The Hate U Give, landing an agent on Twitter, and why she trusts teenagers more than the publishing industry.
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Interrogating the English Language with Safiya Sinclair
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Yona Harvey
Yona Harvey talks about her path to becoming a poet, Winnie Mandela as an artistic inspiration, and what it means to write more publicly.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Abeer Hoque
Abeer Hoque talks about coming of age in the predominantly white suburbs of Pittsburgh, rewriting her memoir manuscript ten times, and looking for poetry in prose.
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Multitudes: Policing Black Art
Editors and producers skin my art and wrap my entire face with it, asking me to write and read in Black face.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Clarence Major
Clarence Major discusses his new collection Chicago Heat and Other Stories, the artist’s role in politics, Donald Trump and race relations, and Paris in the good old days.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tara Betts
Tara Betts discusses her newest collection, Break the Habit, the burden placed on black women artists to be both artist and activist, and why writing is rooted in identity.
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The Rumpus Interview with Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay discusses her new collection, Difficult Women, the problem with whiteness as the default and the need for diverse representation, and life as a workaholic.
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Multitudes: The Practice of Forgetting
I want to say it must matter. Because history is erased from our veins when we allow ourselves to forget where we came from.
...moreHands Off
Writer-actor-comedian Phoebe Robinson’s debut essay collection is You Can’t Touch My Hair: and Other Things I Still Have to Explain. As Janice Roshalle Littlejohn writes for the LARB blog, “Her writing is relatable and woke, confronting racism and how to cope with white guilt, feminism and female issues, and America’s problematic relationship with black hair.” Robinson […]
...moreTelling, Not Showing
As I processed a dominant Euro-American writing pedagogy from the perspective of an aspiring fiction writer and an immigrant critic of color, I couldn’t stop wondering: are we, in 21st-century America, overvaluing a sight-based approach to storytelling? And could this be another case of cultural particularity masquerading itself as universal taste? Namrata Poddar tries to […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Leland Cheuk
Leland Cheuk discusses his novel The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong, dark humor, cancer, morally corrupt characters, and his mother.
...moreA Convergence of Selves
In an illuminating interview with Claire Schwartz for Guernica, writer Kai Cheng Thom discusses activism, the unique intersections felt by people of color in the queer community, consensual behavior, trauma, and the immigrant experience. It’s a lot of ground to cover, and in doing so she reveals the convergence of all these areas of concern into […]
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models.
...morePublishers Need Diversity, Too
The publishing industry is at a cultural turning point, with recognition and celebration of writers of color on the rise. But despite the surge in the publishing industry’s interest in works by writers of color, the people working behind the scenes still lack much-needed diversity. Recent studies have found that the majority of those who […]
...moreAn Explanation, Not a Justification
At Lit Hub, Joyce Chen explains The Seventh Wave’s reason for being (not that she needs to): We were not trying to prove ourselves “right” or defy any odds to become a household name; we simply wanted to exist.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Cole Lavalais
Cole Lavalais discusses her debut novel, Summer of the Cicadas, why she’s a huge fan of outlining, and the importance of dedicated communities for black writers.
...moreProgress in Speculative Fiction
David M. Perry writes for Pacific Standard on the newest wave of progressive speculative fiction. Perry writes in conversation with Daniel José Older, author of Shadowshaper and the Bone Street Rumba series.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tania James
Tania James discusses her most recent novel, The Tusk That Did the Damage, the challenges of writing an elephant narrator, and the moment when she knew she could be a writer.
...moreWhen White Saviors Create Literary Journals
Hey! We’re white! And we all voted for Obama! Twice! We should do something to help the literary downtrodden. American literature is already frustrating enough with publishing sorely lacking in diversity. But things can be even worse when the white-dominated industry tries too hard to appeal to writers of color. Read this scathing and hilarious satire […]
...moreHeal Together
The Internet may have irreversibly altered the forms activism takes, but there is still room for change. Christopher Soto reflects on activist frameworks used in 2015 and offers their strategies for working toward a more inclusive poetry community in the future: I believe in critical conversations with my community, I believe in doing rehabilitative work […]
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The Conversation: Jayson Smith and A. H. Jerriod Avant
My responsibility is to not be negligent and cause unnecessary harm. To a listener or reader. My allegiance is only to truth.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Vivian Lee
As an editor of color, one advantage I have is that writers of color are comfortable knowing I’m not asking for edits to artificially enhance or to cover up their race. It’s not weird to me that their characters look like them.
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The Conversation: Joshua Bennett and Camonghne Felix
What scares me in the current work is how much I trust the concept, what I’m trying to achieve.
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The Conversation: Jeremy Clark and Thiahera Nurse
I’m thinking about the difference between “I stay somewhere” and “I live somewhere.”
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The Conversation: Cortney Lamar Charleston and Danez Smith
The South is my favorite cousin.
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