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The Cover Design Exams
A heart, the source of empathy, or at least what we use as a visual for love, was an initial starting point. As a nod to the medical part of the essay, a graphic illustration of a heart is used. Kimberly Glyder was responsible for designing the cover of Leslie Jamison‘s essay collection, The Empathy Exams.…
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A Yelp, of Sorts
The Morning Review is doing a series of restaurant reviews by writers which isn’t exactly a series of restaurant reviews. This is exactly the criteria: “1) it is a restaurant review; 2) it is not a restaurant review.” The first essay in the series is by our own Roxanne Gay, and is about a restaurant named Radio Maria,…
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Dear Alice
Alice Munro’s birthday was last week (happy belated, Alice!). She’s also Elliott Holt‘s favorite writer, and over at Literary Mothers, Elliott wrote a beautiful letter to her: Your stories provide deeply private pleasures. You are our writer, part of our family. Now that you’ve won the Nobel, even more people have joined our ranks. And I’m…
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Learning Curves
Have you ever regretted the way in which you once wrote? In this week’s New York Times “Bookends” column, Anna Holmes and Leslie Jamison take this question on. A few early mistakes, as listed by Holmes: Inserting myself into reported narratives where I didn’t belong. Crafting long, complex sentences that I thought made me sound intelligent…
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Summer Reading List
If you’re looking for independent bookstores to visit on your Southern road trip—or, in the absence of a road trip, want to know what Southern booksellers are reading this summer—then check out this interview with five Southern indie bookshop owners. Read up!
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Text-ing
Interactive digital storytelling: fiction’s next frontier? In the New York Times, Chris Suellentrop examines interactive technologies as used in Blood & Laurels, by Emily Short: Exploring those possibilities is one reason Ms. Short became a writer of interactive fiction rather than of more conventional stories. “I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t write multiple versions of the same scene,” she…
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This American Life, Moving Forward
Ira Glass loses his voice; Ira Glass gets it back: The New York Times reports on This American Life’s risky split from PRI and venture into the world of independent programming (and don’t worry—it doesn’t sound like the storytelling is going away).
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The House Sitter
If a novel depicted house sitters’ lives, its scenes would depict the complex relationship between the homeowner and sitter, the way trust is built between strangers in such an intimate setting as a home: how house keys are swapped, free food is provided or withheld. At the Paris Review, Aaron Gilbreath writes about his history of side jobs,…
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Elevator Protocol
Elevators, that common denominator of human anxiety, have a long history. David Trotter reviews Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator by Andreas Bernard: That’s what elevator protocol is for. Or so we might gather from the very large number of scenes set in lifts in movies from the 1930s onwards. The vast majority of these scenes involve…
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For Sale: Wallace Stevens Home
The distinct quietness of Wallace Stevens’s life—modernist, insurance salesman, writer of The Emperor of Ice Cream—is almost as famous as his poetry. Now! His 1920s Colonial home is for sale in Hartford, CT. If you’re looking for a spacious new house to raise a family in, or have a vested interest in historical preservation, maybe you…
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Before QWERTY
Before life on the iPad keypad there was life on the QWERTY computer keypad, and before that, the architecture of the typewriter. Dan Piepenbring reports on the history of the typewriter which was, ah yes, “rife with collaboration, ingenuity, betrayal, setbacks, lucre, acrimony, misguided experimentation, and bickering white men.”
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Applause, Applause
Is there, perhaps, something in your life which begs applause? Or maybe you want to help break a world record, or affirm strangers, or do you just like clapping? Rumpus contributor Dustin Luke Nelson is putting on two hours of unbroken applause at the Walker Art Center’s Open Field in Minneapolis on Thursday (6/26) from 5:30-7:30.…