Interviews
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The Rumpus Interview with David Shields
Essayist and lauded thinker David Shields talks about his new book, whether it’s necessary to draw sharp distinctions between literary forms, and his celebration of literature that collapses the distance between the artist’s life and work.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jesse Sykes
The first thing you notice about Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter is Sykes’s voice. It’s a stunning blend of contradictions, cutting and vulnerable, breathy and scratchy, enigmatic and bare.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joe Mozingo
Journalist Joe Mozingo digs deep into his ancestral history to uncover the origin behind his surname, and discovers it’s one of the few African names to survive not only the Middle Passage, but the history of American slavery itself.
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The Rumpus Interview with Tom Reiss
Journalist and biographer Tom Reiss sits down and explores the idea that, “however obscure his subjects might be, he [is] a writer first and foremost, obsessed with getting the details right while crafting a story that could propel even a…
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The Rumpus Interview with Dmitry Samarov
Dmitry’s spontaneous cab drawings had such great composition and confidence. You could almost feel his grimace in so many of his lines.
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The Rumpus Interview with Roger Gastman
Graffiti impresario Roger Gastman sits down and talks about the evolution of street art, his new film The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan, and his newest exhibit and ode to Washington D.C., Pump Me Up: D.C. Subculture of the 1980s.
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The Rumpus Interview with Dr. Gary Habermas
Dr. Gary Habermas, a near-death experience expert, discusses the scientific evidence behind stories of those who have died—and have subsequently returned.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is a craftswoman of poetry. Her poems are constructed with such precision and graceful narration that I don’t consider them to be mere poems, but sermons.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ayize Jama-Everett
Oakland-based novelist Ayize Jama-Everett sits down to talk notions of family, growing up as a sci-fi and comics lover in Harlem, and Tupac Shakur.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lars Iyer
If Laurel and Hardy stumbled into Mike Leigh’s Naked, the result might resemble writer and philosophy lecturer Lars Iyer’s novels.
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THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH ERIN MCKEOWN
McKeown’s crowd-funded new album, Manifestra, is a dizzying ten-track blend of political blues and party songs, featuring radio-friendly handclaps, a New Orleans-style funeral march, and a jam she co-wrote with Rachel Maddow.
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The Rumpus Interview With Michelle Orange
We sat on my bed, our backs against the wall, talking about her essay collection, This Is Running For Your Life.