Columns
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some roads I don’t care to travel anymore
Fridays, I drove Route 119 at sunset toward your old home, turning off at the potholed road to clatter through meadows dotted with cows and cornflowers,
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I Don’t Want to Hurt These Characters: A Conversation with Paige Lewis
“It’s been really strange to live in the world of the book for so many years and now be outside of it. It feels a little bit unfair. I want to be back in the throes of the book. I…
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The August Rumpus Book Club Selection: “Audition” by Katie Kitamura
Our third installment of the relaunch The Rumpus Book Club* will be on August 25 at 2pm ET. Host Debbie Millman will be speaking with Katie Kitamura about her multi-award winning novel Audition. Audition was a finalist for the Pulitzer…
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Physics, Fractals and A Zumba Playlist
I’d grown up internalizing the big-city maxim that strangers didn’t interact for no reason, unless mental illness was involved. You kept your eyes down and your pace brisk; life was a serious business. But that day, I glimpsed an alternate…
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The Sleepwalker
1. Semiquincentennial I woke to find the big tree down,the maple I had hung from as a childon whose branches I’d assumedmy daughter’s daughters would swing free.There was no storm. I had not hearda crack, and yet I woke to…
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The Spectacle
“The ubiquity of the bystander video in contemporary protest culture has brought videos of police executions into the mainstream. Despite the fact that it’s possible to use generative AI to create videos of basically anything now, these witness videos remain…
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My Mother’s Mother’s God
My mother proceeded from this father. The sermon droned. She opened a hymnal and climbed inside, came out singing new songs I never heard her mother sing. Holy mysteries
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Girl on Girl (Week Two): Can a Woman Belong to Herself While Still Loving Men Deeply?
For the first time in my life, I’m not evaluating whether someone would make a good husband or life partner. I’m asking a different question: What pulls me toward another human being?
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Reawakening the Kid Inside for Creativity + “Intergenerational Hanging Out” : A Conversation with Austin Kleon
“The older I get, the more I want to be edited. I just want the work to be good. I don’t care as much about the how of it. I’m more willing to kill my darlings. I like the term…
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Language as a Living Force: A Conversation with Nicholas Goodly
“Knowing myself as a dancer first allowed me to approach poetry as an extension of that process. I receive, I observe, I allow the insides to give the experience new shape. Similar to dance, I believe good poetry is not…
