Muumuu House: Independent Press Embraces Online Genres

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Muumuu House, an independent press edited by author Tao Lin, publishes not only poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, but also Gmail chats and Twitter selections on its starkly minimalist website.

Lin’s most recent book Shoplifting from American Apparel garnered mixed reviews from critics including Michael Schuab who called it “the funniest and saddest book I’ve read in a long time” on Bookslut.

Lin is known for his absurdist humor and Muumuu House is not simply his place to publish new work but also a clean white space, an online gallery of sorts, to display insightful but most likely irreverent content to fill the 4-6 month stretches between publishing new books.

So far, Muumuu House has come out with Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs, by Ellen Kennedy, The Brandon Book Crisis, edited by Tao Lin and Brandon Scott Gorrell, and During My Nervous Breakdown I Want a Biographer Present, by Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Maddie Oatman has interviewed musicians and writers for The Rumpus. She's the research editor at Mother Jones, where she also writes. A Boulder transplant, she can often be found on her bike, skis, or cooking with vegetables, and she wrote her English thesis on a gay red-winged monster and Billy the Kid. Follow her on Twitter or read occasional musings on her blog Oats. More from this author →