Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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The Never-Ending Search for Shelf Space
Libraries are continuously purchasing new books, but the only way to make room for new titles is by removing old ones. Phyllis Rose explores the process of libraries’ acquisition and disposal of books in The Shelf, excerpted at Medium. Looking…
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The Decline of the University Press
The university press system has faced a rapid decline. Research libraries, looking to cut costs to pay for expensive electronic journal subscriptions, buy fewer monographs. Subsidies from parent institutions are down. Meanwhile, the researchers who publish with and rely on…
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Notable NYC: 5/17–5/23
Saturday 5/17: Lit Crawl Brooklyn with Bodega, The NewerYork, A Public Space, Chris Abani, and more. Various Locations, 5 p.m., free. Adam Resnick reads from Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation (May 2014), a collection of memoir-essays. BookCourt,…
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Rumpus Round-Up: All the Abramson News Fit to Print
Jill Abramson, the first woman to head the New York Times as executive editor, was abruptly fired Wednesday and replaced by managing editor Dean Baquet. The New Yorker attempted to explain why, with the leading theory being Abramson’s discovery several…
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Burrito with a Side of Stories
Chipotle is getting into the publishing business. Vanity Fair reports that the burrito chain’s cups and bags will feature very short stories from authors like Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, and others. Shortly after the announcement, Slate published…
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Literary Agents Are People Too
Authors aren’t the only ones facing rejection. Literary agents receive rejections after sending out their authors’ writing to editors, and they also get rejected by authors that they want to represent. Over at Plougshares, Eric Nelson reveals a few more insights into life…
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Distancing Author and Narrator
The line between fiction and non-fiction has always been blurry, but an author’s choice of genre—be it novel, memoir, or even autobiography—results in different relationships between the reader and narrator. Writing in HTMLGIANT, Art Edwards takes a closer look at…
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The Love-Hate of Nathaniel P.
A “total Nathaniel P.” describes a certain kind of male literary intellectual, the opposite of the finance crowd who coined the phrase an insult. But among people who have actually read Adelle Waldman’s novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,…
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Fatal Short Stories
Depictions of death in short stories can challenge even seasoned writers. John McDonough, writing in the Colorado Review, explains why: The immediacy of the death of a loved one offers rich emotional possibilities, but ones that are remarkably complicated. Mine…
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Marveling At Roxane Gay
The literary community loves Rumpus Essays Editor Roxanne Gay. She’s prolific, supportive, and a great writer. Jason Diamond, writing over at Flavorwire, explains further: While I can’t really comment on whether she’s from Krypton or offer any definitive knowledge of…
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Who Killed the Novel?
Last week, Will Self declared the novel dead. But so have a lot of people over the last century. Video may have killed the radio star, but who killed the novel? Rebecca Makkai asks that question over at Ploughshares: Who…
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W8ing for Godot
Poet Sophia La Fraga translated Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot into Emoji and shorthand texts and then performed the translation with poet Trisha Low. W8ING, as La Fraga has titled the interpretation, defies categorization but combines performance, translation, and technology.…