No addition without subtraction: A Conversation with Hilary Leichter
As fiction writers, we’re always saying that what we write is not “real,” but as soon as we write it, it becomes a part of the world.
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Rumpus Articles
To Feel Complicit in a Broken System: Geoffrey D. Morrison’s Falling Hour
There is impressive control in the deployment of these mind spirals, with Morrison integrating link after link into a narrative that grows more complex but keeps all its many balls in the air, the kind of juggler who satisfies and surprises with what he is able to toss into the mix.
Everyone sees themselves as the main character: A conversation with Larrison Campbell
When you’re writing about family, there's what’s really relevant and has meaning to you. And then there’s what has meaning to the audience.
What to Read When You’re Seeking Wonder in Times of Grief
By practicing grief, much like one might develop a creative or meditation practice, I found wonder everywhere and in everything.
I Had to Make it Mean Something: A Conversation with John Cotter
. . . the process of writing really was a devotion. It gave me a reason to keep going. And because I’m interested in formal problems, it was the crafting of sentences, finding rhythms, shaping my material that helped me to get hold of it.
Voices on Addiction: Where the Heart Is
I read in the kitchen after dinner, after the dishes were washed and put away and everyone crowded into the living room to watch the Twilight Zone or Bonanza. There was a light over the table, and I’d dissolve into the stories.
When the Underworld Comes Knocking: Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto
“You were a cop and then a robber and a cop again,” recalls Officer Munson. And on this fateful night, he wants Carney to play again, this time with deadly stakes.
The Price of Power, Cannibalism, and Transmutation: A Conversation with Shanta Lee Gander
While I do see there is importance in recognizing identity, I also want there to be a broader field to go beyond the identity itself, the identities that were forced upon us, in addition to what we continue to reinforce and agree upon as identity.
September Spotlight: Letters in the Mail
Our next Letters in the Mail come from author Mario Chard and Quinn Carver Johnson.
Maybe Home is the Thing We Carry: A Conversation with Janika Oza
. . . This is a story of a family trying to find their place in a world that is constantly shifting beneath them, and I wanted them and their relationships and emotions and memories at the center of this narrative.
Nonbinary Thinking: Stephanie Burt’s We Are Mermaids
We’re reminded that the first creatures that crawled out of the ocean were fish that evolved to walk on land. What are we if not constantly evolving?
