October will be a homecoming of sorts for the Rumpus Book Club. Six and a half years ago, Stephen Elliott came up with this new idea for a book club—we’ll get books that haven’t been released yet and talk about them and chat online with the authors. Sometimes maybe club members will review the books and we’ll publish those reviews. And we’ll take those chats and nice them up a bit and run them as features on the site. Sometimes we’ll get big names with big books and other times we’ll get debuts from small indie presses but the one thing they’ll all have in common is that they’ll be great books.
The person who made all that happen in practice was our first Managing Editor, Isaac Fitzgerald, who has since become the Books Editor at BuzzFeed. And now, all these years later, he (along with artist Wendy McNaughton) gets to be on the other side of the chat. We’re beyond excited to announce that our October selection for the Rumpus Book Club will be Knives and Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos.
And, it features recipes too! I can’t wait to get my hands on the book. I’ve loved Wendy’s artwork since 2011 when she wrote and drew the “Meanwhile” series for The Rumpus, and Isaac was the first editor I ever had a chance to work with—what I learned from him has never left me. If you join the Book Club today, you’ll not only get this book almost three weeks ahead of everyone else, but you’ll also have the opportunity to chat live with Isaac and Wendy online and ask them anything you want about the book. You can join the book club monthly or annually, and you can do it even if you live outside the US. Join in the next week, and we’ll also send you a copy of our September selection, Jade Chang’s The Wangs vs. the World. And, remember that our Book Club helps us keep The Rumpus running—so, you can speak with amazing writers, read great books, and support the website in one fell swoop.
