October 2016
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These Small Little Containers
I think that poets and songwriters have a lot in common because a songwriter really has to be a poet first. That’s how we live our lives. It’s the same kind of thinking. … [W]e put our stories into these…
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Guns Don’t Kill People, Poets Do
Verlaine bought the 7mm six-shooter in Brussels on the morning of 10 July 1873, determined to put an end to a torrid two-year affair with his teenage lover. The gun Paul Verlaine used to wound fellow poet and lover, Arthur…
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This Week in Posivibes: Jerry Goldsmith’s Chinatown
Light in the Attic Records is reissuing Jerry Goldsmith’s 1974 soundtrack to the movie Chinatown in a limited release of 2500 copies. The reissue comes on gold vinyl, with album art by Sterling Hundley and layout by Jay Shaw. The soundtrack was…
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Writing by Hand
There are those who bemoan schools’ decisions to stop teaching cursive, and those who welcome the decision with keyboard in hand. John Oppenheimer, writing for the New Yorker, talks about writing to his daughters at summer camp using cursive, even though…
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jade Chang
Jade Chang discusses her new novel The Wangs vs. the World, citizen journalism, and how to write an immigrant story that’s not all about pain.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #55: Donald Ray Pollock
Donald Ray Pollock has been steadily serving up plates of mild horror since his first book of short stories, Knockemstiff, appeared in 2008. Pollock followed the explosion of Knockemstiff with The Devil All the Time, in 2011, his first novel,…
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Next Letter for Kids: Janet Sumner Johnson
We’re sending our next Letter for Kids from Janet Sumner Johnson! Janet writes about candy, and a fabulous candy jar, and its tragic end. Subscribe by October 29 to read all about the ordeal! For more information on Letters for Kids, click…
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Notable San Francisco: 10/26–11/01
Wednesday 10/26: University of San Francisco presents its fall MFA faculty: Laleh Khadivi, Dave Madden, D. A. Powell, and Susan Steinberg. Free, 7:30 p.m., USF, Fromm Hall, Maraschi Room. Brit Bennett (The Mothers) reads from her debut novel. Free, 7:30…
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A Cri de Coeur
In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, J.T. Price reflects on the 40th anniversary of the film, Network, and the responsibility of the news media. “Who are we, after all, to judge the substance of what media conglomerates…
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A Looming Death
MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Pulitzer-finalist poet Lucia Perillo has died at the age of 58, reports Michael Shaub in the LA Times. Perillo suffered from multiple sclerosis, and wrote about her “looming death” in her latest collection, Time Will…
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Zadie Smith and Jeffrey Eugenides in Conversation
I only have a curiosity, an interest, a love, and that’s it, really. At the New Yorker, Michele Moses shares a video clip from the 2016 New Yorker Festival featuring writers Zadie Smith and Jeffrey Eugenides in conversation about their…
