Lauren O'Neal, Author at The Rumpus

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A Helpful Guide to Writing Children’s Books

If it’s always been your secret ambition to write a children’s picture book, Buzzfeed Books can help you get started with this handy-dandy thirteen-step guide, illustrated by the Rumpus’s own Jason Novak (with a…

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Rumpus Original

PJ Harvey Tuesday #7: “A Perfect Day Elise”

PJ Harvey's fourth studio album includes not one but two songs based on J. D. Salinger stories.

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The Crossword Puzzle Turns 100

Word nerds, it’s time for a celebration: the crossword puzzle turned 100 years old over the weekend. See if you can solve the first one ever published—it was shaped like…

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Medieval Mongolia’s Undefeated Wrestling Princess

Genghis Khan had a great-granddaughter named Khutulun (the cousin of Kublai Khan), and it sounds like she was a total badass: As she grew older, she joined the public competitions…

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Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” Was Real and Terrifying

Ronald Reagan’s anecdotal speech about a “welfare queen” who bilked taxpayers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars has largely been discredited as racist demagoguery, but it turns out that…

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A Portrait of the Bombers as Young Men

The Rolling Stone article “Jahar’s World,” which peered into the life of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been lauded as one of the best longreads of the year. Now the Boston…

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To Sleep, Perchance to Write

You’ve read about famous authors’ workspaces, writing schedules, and semi-compulsive rituals, but have you read about their sleep habits? Brain Pickings’s Maria Popova collaborated with information designer Giorgia Lupi and Rumpus…

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“Little Black Girls Are Taught How to Be Silent”

The defenders always ask the same questions: How old is 14, really? Why didn’t they tell anyone sooner if they were so innocent? Why didn’t they say anything at all?…

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Every Kiss Begins with Konspiracy

Sometimes, during the sparkly onslaught of holiday-season diamond commercials, someone you know might remark that diamonds aren’t inherently very valuable and that there’s a conspiracy among diamond dealers to keep…

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“It Was Worth Every Minute and More”

Writing-biz veteran Lydia Laurenson once landed a translation deal for a book that involved her German publisher flying her to Germany for professional photography sessions and multiple TV appearances. “Yet,…

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Women Writing Weird Words

Somewhere between its Kmart and hysterical phases, literary realism got shaken up, when a group of young women writers began crafting a spectral brand of fantastical, strange fiction….Permeating the stories…

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Is It Time to Get Rid of College Essays?

Today’s vocationally minded students view World Lit 101 as forced labor, an utterwasteof their time that deserves neither engagement nor effort. So you know what else is a waste of…

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