On Teaching Poetry to Women in Prison
I was nineteen. Prison seemed sexy and foreign—as did most forbidden things.
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
The Rumpus Interview with Jack Pendarvis
I didn't so much experiment as flounder around. But experiment is a nice word for it!
Different Sorts of Rubbish: Super Bowl Edition
George Orwell would not have liked the Super Bowl. In his 1945 essay “The Sporting Spirit” he writes, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound…
Link to Drink: What Christopher Hitchens Gave Up God For
Rarely have I seen a Christopher Hitchens TV interview in which the atheistic author of God is Not Great isn’t knocking back an ice-clinking glass of whiskey of some brand or another. Yet, I…
Swinging Modern Sounds #5: Heliotropism
I love the city of Tucson, Arizona, because I like places that have run out of luck, and I think running out of luck makes for good music. Running out…
And I Thought Facebook Was Mostly For People To See My Awesome Status Updates
And they are totally awesome, as I’m sure most of you already know. I mean: Joshuah Bearman Blames It On The Rain?!?!? Come on, how cool is that, right? Well,…
The Silence of Thousands of Miles
A Review of Matthew Eck’s The Farther Shore “The war is now a story. How will it get told?” – William T. Vollmann
BAD MOMMY BLOG: Princesses, part I
disney, princess, writing, outliers, malcolm gladwell, children's books, bitches
Better Late Than Never: Bebe
Bebe won a Grammy in 2005, and then promptly retired. These days, when there are pitifully few female Latin artists on the charts, this revolutionary gypsy songstress is sorely missed.…
The Inside-out Teddy Bear
Kent Rogowski’s unraveled and reraveled Bears are regular teddy bears taken apart, turned inside-out, and stitched back together. While this may be the stuff and stuffing that childhood nightmares are…
The Failed Shorty Q&A With Susannah Breslin
Susannah Breslin is the author of The Reverse Cowgirl, a blog known for its intelligent take on sexuality and pornography. She’s the author of You’re A Bad Man, Aren’t You.…
More John Updike Links
Mark Oppenheimer’s essay, “Why Everyone Used to Read Updike,” from five years ago, in which it occurs to him that “those frequent short stories that grab New Yorker space from younger, fresher voices,…