Katie O'Brien, Author at The Rumpus

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Imperiled Across Both the Deep and Immediate Past

At the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates unflinchingly analyzes and condemns the history of mass incarceration in America and its disproportionately devastating effect on black families: The blacks incarcerated in this country…

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Making the Cut

In writing, what is not said can be just as important as what is. Over at the New Yorker, John McPhee discusses the art of choosing what to include and what…

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Plot and Prejudice

At Electric Literature, Matthew Salesses discusses the works of Joseph Conrad and Flannery O’Connor to explore the problem of unconscious prejudice and unintentional racism in writing, and how writers can…

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True Hero

The poorer areas of Bogota, Colombia have limited access to books, due to not being close-by to any of the city’s libraries. José Gutierrez, a 53-year-old garbage collector, began rescuing…

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(Don’t) Stick To What You Know

At the Atlantic, Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House, discusses her struggle with writing about Detroit without having lived there, and how Zora Neale Hurston’s work helped her give…

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Use It in a Sentence

British designer Jez Burrows was looking up a word in the New Oxford American Dictionary and was struck by how literary the example sentences for word definitions were. So he…

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Refusal to Read

At Slate, Jacob Brogan responds to the Duke freshman who has made the headlines for speaking out on his refusal to read Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, on the…

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Novel Recipes

Blogger Cara Nicoletti has written a cookbook inspired by various works of literature. It’s called Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books, and Nicoletti gives recipes for…

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Belize’s Art Revolution

At Electric Literature, Monica Byrne discusses the ongoing art revolution in Belize, and how artists create works that represent a diverse and beautiful country dealing with the trauma of postcolonialism:…

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Extensions of the Self

Over at Vela Magazine, Rachel Wilkinson explores the cultural significance of women’s hair: Feminists have often identified hair grooming as the first lesson in gender socialization. Dolls are perfectly designed…

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The Dilemma of Wartime Journalism

At Guernica, Richard Falk discusses journalism during the Vietnam War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how remaining ‘objective’ is actually being biased by turning a blind-eye to suffering: I came…

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Fighting Age and Gender Bias in Screenwriting

Meryl Streep announced that she is funding The Writer’s Lab, a new program dedicated to supporting and mentoring female screenwriters over 40—directly in response to the gender and age bias…

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