Posts by author
Serena Candelaria
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A Computer Game Comes to Life
“I discovered Hitler the summer I turned twelve,” Michael Clune writes of the summer he spent playing the computer game “Beyond Castle Wolfenstein” in his Granta essay, “World War II Has Never Ended.” As the summer progresses, history is made and…
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Technology: An Extension of Life
At The New Yorker festival this weekend, Jonathan Franzen and Clay Shirky set out to answer the question: Is technology good for culture? Reflecting on the afternoon discourse, John McDermott of The Awl writes: “Technology does not necessarily advance or…
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POSTPARTUM
Postpartum depression takes on a recognizable form in Megan Stielstra’s Rumpus essay, “Channel B,” as she describes her experience of finding solace in watching another mother on a high-tech video baby monitor, a reminder that we are never truly alone.…
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A World Unto Itself
Wilton Barnhardt, a man with a tendency to write about women, focuses on the eccentricities of the South in his latest novel Lookaway, Lookaway. In her review, Cathleen Schine explores the novel as a “layered reflection on family.” The characters…
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The dark side of criticism
“At eleven, I felt that I might actually play anything on this violin,” writes Catherine Tice, the daughter of two musicians. Her essay in Granta, “A Brief History of Musical Failure,” raises the question of what it means to have…
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WRITING AS A KIND OF WAKING DREAM
The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don’t know and find something out. In his recent essay featured in The New Yorker, writer T. Coraghessan Boyle discusses the act of…
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Obsession and Humor in Writing
In early December, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond will teach writing classes at the SF Grotto. His December 7th class will focus on the idea of embracing one’s obsessions to jump-start good writing, avoiding the pitfalls of sentiment and self-absorption. On…
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The Power of Negative Reviews
Lee Siegel, author of two collections of criticism, confesses that for years, he earned a living writing negative book reviews. His piece, “Burying the Hatchet: The Death of the Negative Book Review,” describes the negative review as one that implies…
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The Poem You’re Not Quite Writing
Helen Mort, the five-time winner of the Foyle Young Poets award, discusses her creative process in an interview with Granta. “I’m visited by an idea that won’t go away and I often carry it around for months. The shapes of…
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WHEN A MILLENNIAL KILLS
Mike Lacher’s “Our Killer Appears to Be a Millennial” describes a half-baked plan to find a killer (who is between the ages of 18 and 35 and always connected to his mobile device) by using content “that feels authentically shareable–…
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Apple: Home to iTherapy
In a time when the young and old, the technophiles and the technophobic flood Apple stores, an employee writing under the pseudonym of J.K. Appleseed seeks to give readers a glimpse into the lives of those who work behind the…
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The Way Minds Are Constructed
They’ll say, I don’t read fiction because it isn’t real. This is incredibly naive. In a recent interview with The Paris Review, Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the merits of genre writing and the importance of fiction as a vehicle…