The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #161: Andrea Baker
“I had to save my own life. I had the right to save my own life.”
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Mini-Interviews
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #160: Kimberly Dark
“We are all in bed with Daddy. Gendered expectations are part of our DNA.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #159: John Wray
“I think the material itself should be calling the shots.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #158: Paige Cooper
“The leaps that fill in the gaps between ideas are the best thing about reading.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #157: Sarah Viren
”There’s a danger to the word [’mine’] that I find really rich and exciting.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #156: Steph Auteri
“I wanted my book to open up a conversation.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #155: Bonnie Chau
“There’s always the thought that there’s more, there’s something else, something more than this.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #154: Jaclyn Gilbert
“We have to create spaces for all voices to be heard in us.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #153: Julie Schumacher
“I have to confess here that I never studied Shakespeare in college.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #152: Anita Felicelli
“My gut instinct is to privilege rebels.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #151: David Shields
“Antidote to Trump? Whole book is an attempt to find one.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #150: Catherine Lacey
“Honestly, I couldn’t write a non-transgressive woman if I tried.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #149: Susan Orlean
“I believe a writer should know a lot more than what she puts on the page.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #148: Daniel Torday
“I also wanted this to be a deeply overtly American book.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #147: Saadia Faruqi
“If you can’t really tell the whole story in five thousand words, are you really a writer?”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #146: Andrew Solomon
“I can tell my story with precautions; others strip away my armor and expose a beating heart.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #145: Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint
“Categories are, by definition, externally created and applied.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #144: Cathy Linh Che
“I think a safe space is one of deep listening and deep caring.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #143: Saul Austerlitz
“I felt that Meredith Hunter was the invisible figure at the center of the story.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #142: Chelsea Hodson
“If I didn’t allow myself to be vulnerable on the page, I wouldn’t get anywhere.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview #141: Tara Isabella Burton
“I want to make a case for the serious, literary legitimacy of the female experience of self-construction.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #140: Alicia Kopf
“We need narrative patterns to understand reality.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #139: Debra Jo Immergut
“If the door doesn’t open, it’s okay to walk away, give your poor head a rest. And try again later.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #138: Melissa Broder
“We have what we need inside us already, it’s just a question of uncovering it, of remembering who we are again and again.”
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The Rumpus Mini-interview Project #137: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“Admitting a love or joy, or yes, wonder for the natural world is, especially as a woman of color, one of the most vulnerable things we can do.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #136: Shy Watson
“I do think when I write it’s kind of therapy or having to tell someone everything or maybe writing it gets it out of my head?”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #135: Patrick Nathan
“I wanted to make these characters much more complex than the individual boxes we normally see.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #134: Elisabeth Cohen
“Writing is, for me, maybe like what religious faith is for some people.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #133: Jake Shears
“I wrote this book. I worked really, really hard on it, and I was a little scared by it.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #132: Juliana Hatfield
“These songs are not just sweet confections. They’re talking about real things, like pain, and not being able to connect.”
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