Interviews Archives - Page 29 of 79 - The Rumpus

Bringing the Exterior into our Private Rooms: A Conversation with Victoria Chang

There’s no reason for cruelty; the joy is in the writing. I always try to remember why I started doing this thing: Because I had to. It’s not a choice for many of us writers to write, but we do have a choice about whether we’re going to be nice or not.

why deer and poetry mix so well: A conversation with Caitlin Scarano

When you say, “Oh I run, but I’m not a runner,” it’s like when people say, “Oh I write, but I’m not a writer.” You’re doing it. You just do it and it does get better and there are simple things you can do to make it easier.

I Don’t Sing to Be Heard, I Do It to Keep On: An interview with Ashanti Anderson

“It is impossible to be at peace without understanding.”

Life is Damage: A Conversation with Claire Messud

If you’re interested in character, then you’re interested in perspective, and intimacy, and in the distinctions—and distance—between one person’s mind and another’s.

Running Straight Into the Devastation: Reyna Grande Goes to War

Reyna Grande is the author of several books, including the bestselling memoir, The Distance Between Us, (Atria, 2012) and the sequel, A Dream Called Home, released in 2018. Her latest novel, A…

Candy from Strangers: A Conversation with Jennifer Egan

We can try to perform our inner lives, but we can't actually reveal them. We can create a simulacrum, which is so much of what I see on social media, and that simulacrum is entertainment. It’s exciting because we all love the whiff of authenticity, and the more mediated our culture feels, the more we crave it, but we can't actually give it away. We cannot actually break through the barrier of our individual aloneness.

The Subconscious Repository of Weird Things: A Conversation with Ananda Lima

Poetry allows me to say the thing without a million conjectures. It leaves a lot of space and allows words to resonate and connect without me having to take you there . . . because of the conventions of poetry, I can say things that are understood as a gate to the truth.

Looking for Trouble: A Conversation with Maud Newton

Are these stories true? Did my great grandfather really kill someone with a hay hook? Was my other great grandfather really a communist?

Doomscrolling in Novel Form: A Conversation with John Elizabeth Stintzi

You'll really love this book if you have the opinion that reality is weird. And if you think, like me, that the fact that so many people believe that there’s even a steady thing that we could call reality is fucking insane. If that's who you are, this book is definitely for you.

Witches, Mushrooms, Collective Voices, and Catalan: A Conversation with Irene Solà and Mara Faye Lethem

Remember the little green dolls in Toy Story that live in a vending machine, the claw is their god and they go “The Claw!” and cower away? I imagined the mushrooms in the same way, except their claw is the rain.

Solace in Writing About the End of the World: An Interview with Mike Meginnis

The most beautiful thing I can think of to do with one’s life is to write a novel, even as I feel really ambivalent about the utility of doing it, about the value to myself and to society and to my local community of having written a book.

Make the Story Work, and the Politics Will Look After Itself: The Rumpus Interview with Tony Birch

It is easy to be awed by Tony Birch’s prolific body of work—his dynamic career ranging from firefighter to professor—his deep love of family and heritage, and his humility. He…

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