This is a stunner from Chloe Caldwell: “My Year of Heroin and Acne.” I’m liking Salon’s “Body Issues” series.  Here’s “Sexy Dresses That Barely Fit” by Lily Burana. I’m radically perplexed and a little alarmed by this apparent love-fest for “My Little Pony” among…uh…adult men?  My husband and I sat in the car, after he […]

Michele Filgate’s Ultimate Book Guide, on Salon, navigates 2012’s best by asking writers like Junot Diaz, Carol Anshaw, Jami Attenberg and 47 others to talk about their favorite books this year.  Don’t miss this one. In a similar vein, the edgier crew at LitReactor give their faves of the year. And in order of increasingly […]

Lauren Cerand, Penina Roth, Michelle Orange and a host of interesting others make Flavorwire’s “50 Up-and-Coming New York Culture Makers.” Speaking of up-and-coming, the always-provocative Laura Bogart’s “The Curse of My Birthing Hips,” in Salon’s Body Issues series. On The Weeklings, Sean Beaudoin goes home for the holidays–to Newtown and Sandy Hook elementary school. What […]

Emily Rapp and The Rumpus top HuffPo’s “required reading” list for women.  Apparently our new tagline is: The Rumpus.  Killin’ it for the ladies since 2009. Don’t get too cheerful with all this Rumpus-love and post-election relief.  Republicans basically dissed the wheelchair-bound Bob Dole last week, refusing to back the UN Disabilities Treaty. But back […]

Emily Rapp is back in the house, people.  If you, like a lot of people, can’t get enough of Emily, see her recent “Obnoxious Questions People Ask Me About Writing About My Dying Son.” Just in time for the holidays: Lydia Netzer on “A Writer’s Wish List.” Simon & Schuster opens a self-publishing service. Chicagoans, […]

The Rumpus reviewed and Stephen, Isaac, Julie and Paul profiled on The Bold Italic. Congrats to editor Elizabeth Collins and TNB Books: The Beautiful Anthology is included in the New York Times’ “Best Bathroom Books of 2012.”  Leah Odze Epstein and Caren Osten Gerszberg’s Drinking Diaries anthology is also included on this quirky, fun list. […]

The phenomenal Kathie Bergquist (perhaps the coolest person I can call “my former student”) is launching Ms. Fit, a “web ‘zine dedicated to health, fitness, and wellness from a body-positive, LGBT-friendly feminist perspective.”  Look, if you know me, you know I’m not the target audience for a fitness magazine, no matter how rad it is. […]

This week’s Sunday essay is from Susan Straight.  Here’s Susan talking to Brad Listi at Other People.  Tod Goldberg is interviewing her for the Rumpus soon. Something about this election is giving everyone PTSD flashbacks of Ayn Rand.  Here’s Steve Almond’s Election Literary Smackdown pitting Rand against Steinbeck.  And here’s your Sunday-spit-take winner: George Saunders’ […]

You’ve heard me talk about Other Voices Querétaro.  Our website is now live!  Workshops with Pam Houston, Josip Novakovich and Rob Roberge.  My longtime partner in the Other Voices operations, Stacy Bierlein and I will run Wine and Publishing Talks nightly.  It’s the most affordable international writing program going–I don’t think I’m wrong about that.  Casa […]

This week I’ve been reading a lot about illness.  I read this stunning essay by Barry Silesky, poet and longtime editor of ACM, in the Missouri Review, in tandem with Bob Flanagan’s The Pain Journal.  Neither piece is new, of course.  Flanagan has been dead since the mid-90s.  Silesky’s MS is considerably worse now than when the essay “One Step” […]

Jump on board for the Great Write Off. Speaking of Dzanc Books, co-founder, award-winning author and philanthropist extraordinaire, Steven Gillis, gives it up on Other People. Ladyparts Justice…”they hate creepy anti-women laws.” If you’re in the Bay area for Litquake, come to the Rumpus event the night of Litcrawl, On Hands and Knees, at the […]

Samuel L. Jackson wants you to Wake the Fuck Up. It’s almost time for The Great Write-Off.  And not to late to sponsor someone… Are you on your way to WeHo?  I wish I were.  Here’s where one of my favorite people, Tod Goldberg, will be. The author of the David Foster Wallace bio, Every […]

Honestly, stop everything and watch Sarah Silverman walk you through the current regulations on “voter fraud.”  In short, make sure Grandma’s registered to own a firearm and we’re all good… Did everyone else see this disclaimer Philp Roth wrote for Wikipedia, disputing the rumors that he based his Human Stain protagonist on the critic Anatole […]

The highlight of your literary week?  This “Six Question Sex Interview” with Junot Diaz, conducted by Six Question Sex Interview pioneer, Jessica Anya Blau.  (P.S. Rumor has it I’m next in the queue for this series.  Seriously, Jessica?  You’re putting me after Junot Diaz?  Jesus Christ.) Junot will be here at The Sunday Rumpus next […]

A fascinating documentary film, Sole Survivor, exploring the fates of sole survivors of commercial airline crashes has been successfully funded on Kickstarter.  Congrats! Philip Roth to cooperate on a biography of his life written by Richard Yates’ biographer. Speaking of biographies: an excerpt from DFW’s, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, runs in the New Yorker. […]

Excellent, albeit depressing as hell, HuffPo piece about the corruption in politics.  Uh…happy reading? Ilie Ruby, author of The Salt God’s Daughter, will be interviewed soon on The Sunday Rumpus.  She Writes is spotlighting her on the Countdown to Publication, so get to know her in advance.  And here’s another interview with Ilie. How does a […]

Live in Chicago?  The multi-city, roving reading series, Nervous Breakdown Literary Experience, is back, hosted by Sunday Salon Chicago, tonight.  Black Rock Pub, 3614 N. Damen, 8pm.  Performers include Megan Stielstra, Jac Jemc, Eugene Cross and Lauryn Allison.  I’m emceeing and playing slightly dirty party games.  Black Rock is one of the cutest bars you’ve […]

Navigating the world of literary agents, at The Millions.  Some good stuff here, except that the longshot theory of “it’s all who you know” isn’t really true.  I got my first two literary agents before I knew freaking anyone, and one of them was a really hot agent whose clients were snagging Pulitzers and Bookers. […]

I don’t do Tumblr.  In fact, I’m having acute paranoia that maybe I’ve just spelled or capitalized something wrong IN “Tumblr,” here in the public forum of The Rumpus.  But this week there were a couple of cool, provocative links floating around from that mysterious terrain: 1) Roxane Gay’s smart, blunt imperatives about how to […]

Man Booker longlist announced . . . The deliciously subversive Paula Boemer’s novel, NINE MONTHS, coming soon from Soho.  Soho, I should add, is cranking lately.  They took Alex Shakar’s LUMINARIUM when the big trades had passed, and it ended up an LATimes Prize winner.  J.R. Angelella’s ZOMBIE is getting some serious buzz, too.  We […]

The inimitably incisive Steve Almond rips Romney’s “truth problem” a new one. And here, the freaky Almond interviews the freakier Jennifer Spiegel, author of The Freak Chronicles, on The Nervous Breakdown. Speaking of which: Are you a Mary Gaitskill freak like me?  Check out the (yep, overusing the word freaky here, but man this time […]

Is it ever the season for galleys. Five in particular, in ARC right now, that are either slaying me or, I hope, soon to slay me . . . The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison (Algonquin).  I’ve been looking forward to this novel for a year and a half, and it did not […]

I just got back in the country, and haven’t been surfing the internet much, so today I’m doing something different. Less of a Round-up than a discussion of one thing, or some various things related to one thing.  I guess on the broadest level, that “thing” is the power of critics and book reviews and […]

As this goes live, I should be landing in London.  I used to live there, spending the better parts of 1988-90 in the city as a student, a squatter, a receptionist, a bartender, and a maid respectively.  I considered London my spiritual home, despite the fact that much of my time I had no money […]