Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Bookstore Privilege
Good literary citizens shop at local independent bookstores, and Amazon’s ongoing trade war with Hachette underscores the fragility of a marketplace dominated by a single online retailer. But are local bookstores just another form of privilege? Kelly Jensen writing at…
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Literature vs. NYC
Independent publishers are producing literature, Chris Fischbach writes in the Virginia Quarterly Review, which is not the same thing as what commercial publishers are printing. Fischbach (a publisher at Coffee House Press) goes on to explain a duality similar to that…
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Spouses and the Creative People They Marry
Writers love writing about other writers’s wives. The spouse of a creative person has recently become a popular subject to novelize. But this fad is just a cheap trick, says Sarah Weinman in New Republic, that frees authors from the biographic…
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Racists Are Less Creative
Comparing cognitive tests like the Duncker Candle Problem against views of racial essentialism reveals that racists lack certain problem solving skills, reports Hazlitt: Creativity is fundamentally the ability to recombine old ideas, moving beyond preexisting categories in order to create…
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In Defense of Twitter Poetry
Twitter is like a digital notebook for collecting observations, Rhys Nixon describes over at Entropy, making it an ideal platform for poetry and expression. Twitter also combines humor and absurdism, two elements often overlooked in more conventional literature. But perhaps…
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Eulogy for the Love Letter
Paper notes and postcards have all but joined rotary phones and singing telegrams in the history books of communication. Email and text messages might have the advantage of speed (and sometimes playful naughtiness), but neither can compensate for the tangible…
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Art is What We Buy
Literature and commercial publishing have a diversity problem. People of color and women are both in short supply. Rumpus contributor Daniel Peña, writing at Plougshares, offers a market-based explanation: But I wonder how much these problems stem not from MFA…
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Notable NYC: 5/24–5/30
Saturday 5/24: Judith Goldman and Andy Sterling join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Alex Wright, Michael Lazan, Sharon Guskin, and David Zweig read in the Brooklyn Writers Space series. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Sunday 5/25: Erika K.…
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Adam Wilson Talks Sex, Drugs, and Bankers
Rumpus contributor Adam Wilson sat down with Tobias Carroll over at the Tottenville Review to discuss Wilson’s latest collection of stories, What’s Important is Feeling. Wilson reveals his interests in Occupy Wall Street and social class, observing: And then I…
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Be Consistent, Be Yourself, Be Committed
Rumpus Essays Editor Roxane Gay spoke to Joshunda Sanders at Buzzfeed about her debut novel An Untamed State and her forthcoming collection of essays, Bad Feminist. Gay offers some advice to writers and bloggers: You have to be consistent. You have…
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Just Read All of the Books
Why is offering book recommendations so hard? People solicit book recommendations from their well-read friends all the time, but too often we’re left seemingly stumped to provide them with the best book possible. Swapna Krishna over at BookRiot points out…
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In Defense of Adverbs
Adverbs are bad, every writer has been told, repeatedly. Use them sparingly, if at all, is the advice commonly given. But adverbs do serve a purpose, and more often it is misuse, not overuse, that unfortunately taints bad writing. Robin…