Lit-Link Round-up

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The world seems to be zooming towards a beautiful George Saunders tipping point.  Hard to swing a cat without hitting how freaking awesome he is.  Nice to see this in the NYTimes.  And this from Michael Schaub.  And listen to this too.

David Ulin continues Stephen Elliott’s and Jillian Lauren’s defense of the confessional memoir.

Litsa Dremousis poignantly explores what it is to begin a New Year with a family member still missing, as the mystery surrounding Adam Kellner’s disappearance continues.

In a trifecta of magnificence, Karen Bender, Tom Hansen and Rich Ferguson all have self-interviews and excerpts of their new books up at The Nervous Breakdown.

A lot of people in Rumpusland, and the literary community in general, have their minds on Emily Rapp right now.  From my recent post on Facebook: Many of you have heard me rave about Emily Rapp’s transcendent writing. Now, on a more personal note, the journey Emily has been on with her beautiful son, Ronan, caring for him through his Tay-Sachs, will soon be coming to an end for Ronan, though in many ways still only beginning for Emily. In whatever way you know of to send light and peace and hope for a painless passing to Ronan, please do. And to Emily, a profound thank you from the many of us who have been deeply impacted and changed by your words, insights, and completely unconditional and in the moment love for your son.  Here, for anyone who has not yet read Emily’s unspeakably powerful work, was her first essay for the Sunday Rumpus.  Here’s another, “Exquisite Creatures,” which is the piece of hers I first curated for TNB, which absolutely knocked me off my ass, all but reinvented my thoughts on the contemporary memoir, and made me a Rapp fan forever.

Next Sunday, my Margaret Atwood interview will be here.  I still…can’t quite believe that happened.

Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction and a forthcoming memoir, Blow Your House Down. Her novel A Life in Men (Algonquin 2014) is currently under development by Netflix as a series produced by Charlize Theron’s production company, Denver & Delilah. Her most recent novel, Every Kind of Wanting (Counterpoint 2016) was included on several “best of” lists for 2016, including Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books’. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books, and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. She has also served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, and as the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in such venues as Salon, the LA Times, Ploughshares, the Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and in many other magazines and anthologies. After two decades of teaching at many universities, including UIC, Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, UCLA Extension, the University of California Riverside Palm Desert, Roosevelt University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, Gina is excited to be a student again at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Program for Writers, where she has returned to complete the PhD she left unfinished twenty years ago. More from this author →