Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
It’s that time again. Time to round up all the Rumpus weekends. Or the weekend Rumpuses. Or something. This weekend, we featured two super-cool interviews. Saturday’s was a lively discussion with Michelle Meyering, director of programs and events at PEN Center…
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Conversational Pointers from 150 Years Ago
Though these tips for being a good conversationalist are reprinted on The Art of Manliness, they apply to any speaker regardless of gender. What’s truly surprising about them is that they were published in 1875 but are still, for the…
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The Greatest American Novel
The Millions “asked nine English scholars to choose one novel as the greatest our country has ever produced.” The results span a wide range subjects, authors, and time periods. Most you’ve heard of, a few you haven’t, but all of them…
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Matt Bell and Callie Collins in Austin
Austin folks, if you need to take a breather from politics, come to Bookpeople this Saturday for a Matt Bell reading! Bell, whose novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods thrilled and chilled us, will…
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The Muse or the Devil
In a daily feature about “books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly,” NPR’s Two-Way blog linked to our interview with Oliver Sacks about his latest investigation of extraordinary neurology, Hallucinations. Thanks, NPR! We love you back!
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Pay No Attention to the Sexism Behind the Curtain
At a relatively slim 3700 words, Moira Weigel’s and Mal Ahern’s essay “Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child,” sparked by less-than-enlightened political text Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, manages a comprehensive indictment of misogyny in all the…
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Yeah Yeah Yeahs Release Surprisingly Literary Music Video
Regardless of your level of enamoration with indie-rock mainstays the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, if you’re a Rumpus reader, you’ll probably dig the video for their new single “Sacrilege.” It unfolds like a short story, with a perfectly deployed reverse timeline…
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What About Sex-Negative Feminism?
“Sex does not happen in a vacuum immune to outside structural influences,” writes Jillian Horowitz in a piece titled “Unpopular Opinion: I’m A Sex-Negative Feminist.” “[I]n fact, it can (and does) replicate inescapable systems of power and dominance.” “Unpopular opinion”…
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When the Writer Becomes the Written About
When I write a story about someone else, I keep me, myself and I, out of it….But a few years back, I wrote about someone else and did belong in the story; I was an undeniable part of it. While…
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Organic Keeping-on
Mental Floss’s brief history of the term “OK” is more than just all right. Using Allan Metcalf’s OK: The Improbably Story of America’s Greatest Word as a source, it covers not only the term’s birth, but also how it went the…
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How the Other Half of Myself Lives
When Tara Clancy’s mom went from being a cleaning lady to being the girlfriend of the millionaire whose office she cleaned, Clancy’s time became divided in a strange way: If it was a Wednesday after school, I’d be playing handball…
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“The First Boy To See Something Electric In Me”
For smashing new website The Toast, Anne Helen Petersen writes about the particular exuberance of half-childish first love and—this is not a spoiler, it’s announced in the piece’s second paragraph—how she was wrenched into adulthood when her own first love died…