Posts by author
Mike Scalise
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The Rumpus Interview with Mary Roach
Mary Roach discusses Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, the rigors of interviewing aerospace administrators, and why that process nearly caused her to abandon the book entirely.
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Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
In Packing for Mars, Mary Roach matches her curiosity and humor against government secrecy, drunken Russian cosmonauts, and free-floating turds.
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The Shaking Woman
Siri Hustvedt’s memoir is a sprawling exploration of memory and the ways trauma manifests in physical illness—less Mary Karr, more Oliver Sacks.
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Gonville
An actor’s memoir of growing up with a dangerous father channels Augusten Burroughs, Sean Wilsey, et. al.—maybe a bit too closely.
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An Inside Passage
Kurt Caswell’s award-winning essays channel Phillip Lopate and David Foster Wallace, while exploring the plight of a “mountain man” stuck in a paved-over world.