Posts by author
Sam Riley
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Tragic Literary Ends
Publisher’s Weekly is attempting to deconstruct that fateful link between writers and tragic deaths through the anecdotal ends of some of the literary greats. Tennessee Williams choked on a bottle cap, Sir Francis Bacon got a fatal case of pneumonia…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
The Smiths, in superhero cartoon form makes tons of sense. Look no further than here for your daily dose of excerpted saccharine verbiage describing Australian lithographs. Infinity’s been a problem forever. The worst thing to happen to cute animals since…
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Rayner Joins LARB
LA Times columnist/renowned essayist/novelist extraordinaire Richard Rayner is making some moves. His column, “Paperback Writers” has found a new home in the LA Review of Books. Though the move was due to cuts more generally, the ever-worsening state of the…
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Tracking Our Literary Style
Is there a distinct difference between our everyday, colloquial speak and written literary language? Fiction has gone through some major evolution since the 19th century when written prose and the vernacular of the time diverged, but this dichotomy has transformed.…
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Longshot Strikes Again
Longshot Magazine, the annual made-in-48 hrs publishing, internet-based whirlwind, just wrapped up their second issue and the theme is Debt, which proved limitless, submission-wise. It’s got personal essays, both fiction and nonfiction, some photo-journalism—all compiled by around 100 people equipped…
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August’s Rumpus Book Club Selection
August is upon us. This new month brings with it an exciting Rumpus Book Club selection—Alex Shakar’s Luminarium, published by Soho Press. The synopsis is as intriguing as the praise it’s been garnering. Dave Eggers offered his praise, calling it…
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Magazines Everywhere
The economics of publishing a literary magazine reveal some inauspicious stats. Magazine editors have to stay crafty and constantly reinvent what it means to be innovative, just to survive. Even offering digital options as an alternative to print doesn’t guarantee…
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Who Gets to Write the Review?
“The book review page is an odd cultural territory, often inhabited by such hybrid creatures — unlike their contemporaries in other disciplines, where the lines between critic and artist are more pronounced.” All readers are book critics, but disseminating literary…
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Bradbury’s Form Flexibility
There are two Ray Bradbury classics (Something Wicked Comes This Way and The Martian Chronicles) that have been recently adapted into graphic novels and Bradbury is down. The graphic novel illustrations lend themselves well to Bradbury’s prose, and he even…
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A Internet-Based Literary Performance Piece
Do you know about the Precession? Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffrey’s project is pioneering new digital landscape, making the act of writing into a visually-stimulating performance piece, combined with the personal act of reading work on the Internet. It is…
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A Literary Bone Hunt
Ever wonder what happened to author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’ bones? So have a bunch of historians and archaeologists. They’ve been trying to track them down, hoping to reveal whether there is any veracity in the rumors that…
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August’s Poetry Book Club Selection
We are excited to announce Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia as the August selection for the August Rumpus Poetry Book Club. This poetry collection, published by BOA Editions is the winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2011. Author Chris…