Posts by author
Caroline Kangas
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A Very Semi-Serious Request
Sometimes the most we can manage is to flip through the latest New Yorker for the cartoons. A recent Kickstarter project (with only 9 days left!) is a documentary about the clever minds behind those drawings you giggle at each week.
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The First Annual Pygmalion Literary Festival
Have you made your summer plans yet? Well add Champaign-Urbana, Illinois to the list on September 27th and 28th for the Pygmalion Literary Festival, happening for the first time alongside the Pygmalion Music Festival (in it’s ninth year).
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The Kindle’s not-so-stealthy attack
Amazon has been putting out feelers in communities that are doing just fine with out them, thank you very much. First, Kindle Worlds is Amazon’s attempt to commodify fan fiction starting with Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire…
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Rosie the Literary Riveter
“You decide you cannot fault these people for making you angry and miserable, but you feel crazy: half mad at yourself, half mad at these cheer-leeches.” So says Lucy Schiller in her essay on being a barista in San Francisco, the…
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Every Noise at Once
All-powerful algorithms strike again! This time, they bring visualization of relations between all genres of music from Chinese Traditional to Dirty South Rap to Turbo Folk. Each genre includes a sample of its stylings with further breakdowns of the artists…
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“No, It’s Not Called Dear Salty.”
Steve Almond, a longtime Rumpus columnist and the original Dear Sugar before Cheryl Strayed took over, is sharing his two cents again! This time he’s giving advice every Monday at WBUR in Boston on their site Cognoscenti. The most recent column includes…
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Celebrate 20th Century Italian Poetry
Join the Center for the Art of Translation and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in their celebration of Italy’s “Year of Italian Culture in the USA.” They will be bringing Italy to San Francisco through a reading from the recent FSG Book of 20th-Century…
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Voyeurism Via Email
Miranda July’s new project, We Think Alone, sends the personal emails of ten people to your inbox every Monday from July 1 through November 11. Miranda describes the project: I’m always trying to get my friends to forward me emails they’ve sent…
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Life through sidelong glances
Peter Orner‘s first book, Ester Stories, has been re-released with an introduction by Marilynne Robinson. We’ve come to know Peter’s storytelling mastery through the Lonely Voice column here on The Rumpus. The Chicago Tribune noted themes of “distortion, echo and yet clarity…
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“Macho Gay Guys” vs. “Really Gay Guys”
With the recent announcements of two male gay professional athletes, there has been a general feeling of widening acceptance for the LGBT community. But, just as the election of a black president does not mean the end of racism, these…
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Your Reader and Your Character Walk Into a Bar…
Do they have a drink together? Are they both fully formed, real people? Does it even matter? The conversation sparked recently by Claire Messud continues in a New Yorker forum, including responses from Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen.
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The Need for “No”
For an artist, saying no to anything but the art is strength training for the muscle required to say yes to work, yes to creation. At Medium, Kevin Ashton tells a story of saying no: “A Hungarian psychology professor once wrote…