After three years of wonderful work, our phenomenal interviews editor Monet Patrice Thomas will be stepping away to focus on other projects. Also stepping away will be assistant interviews editors Janet Frishberg and A. Malone. To say this team has been an asset to the magazine is an understatement, and they’ll be greatly missed. But we’re excited to see what they each do next, and are grateful for their hard work and dedication over the past three years!
Luckily, they’ll be leaving us in capable hands. We’re thrilled to announce that Elizabeth Gonzalez James will be stepping into the interviews editor role! Before becoming a writer, Elizabeth was a waitress, a pollster, an Avon lady, and an opera singer. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, The Rumpus, StorySouth, PANK, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Her first novel, Mona at Sea, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is out now from Santa Fe Writers Project. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @unefemmejames. We are beyond excited to have her join our editorial team.
Also coming aboard are Janet Rodriguez and Annelies Zijderveld, who will work with Elizabeth as assistant interviews editors. Janet is an author, teacher, and editor living in Northern California. In the United States, her work has appeared in Hobart, Pangyrus, Eclectica, Cloud Women’s Quarterly, American River Review, and Calaveras Station. She is the winner of the Bazanella Literary Award for Short Fiction and the Literary Insight for Work in Translation Award, both from CSUS Sacramento in 2017. Rodriguez has also co-authored two memoirs, published in South Africa. She holds an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles and you can follow her on Twitter at @brazenprincess. Annelies is the author of Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea, selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of their favorite cookbooks in 2015. She writes about food, culture, and the arts with work appearing in PASTE, Edible East Bay, the Kitchn, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Ethel Zine, the Racket Reading Series Quarantine Journal, and Alexandria Quarterly. She holds an MFA in poetry from New England College and a BA in Journalism from Southern Methodist University. She teaches cooking classes around the Bay area and lives in Oakland. Find her online at @anneliesz.
Please join us in extending a warm Rumpus welcome to our new interviews team, and in wishing a fond farewell to our outgoing editors!
***
Photograph of Elizabeth Gonzalez James by Nancy Rothstein.
