A Perfect Sketch of a Moment: Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures
"Memory is not a journalist's tool. Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clear."
Features & Reviews
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Inheritance, Family, and Beauty: A Conversation with Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s debut novel Glassworks (Bloomsbury Publishing, May 2023) follows one family through four generations. The story begins in 1910 with the wealthy young philanthropist Agnes Carter, and then follows…
Our Own Messy, Imperfect Reactions and Feelings: Talking with Hannah Matthews
I'm working on a piece right now for the New York Times where I knew the last sentence before I knew the argument I was making.
Female Trouble: Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black
If you want to evoke the idea of who someone really is, start by showing us what they see.
They Are The Bones: A Conversation with Kelly Link
Going around the world because you can't go through it
The Work We Can Do Only As We Age: A Conversation with Priscilla Long
I approach research dutifully and compulsively.
The No-Man’s Land Between Art and Self: Seth Rogoff’s The Kirschbaum Lectures
We look for ourselves in literature—for comfort or for guidance—but the page rarely provides a clean mirror.
Broadening the Scope of the Environmental Canon: An Interview with Camille T. Dungy
Some books defy categories. Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) by poet Camille T. Dungy pushes the limits of what readers might expect from…
the strange, the surprising, the slightly off-center: A Rumpus Conversation with J. Bailey Hutchinson
part of my fixation with textured and torqued language . . . stems from growing up in the South, where figurative language isn’t limited to formal literary spaces.
Not every queer story needs to be a coming out story: An Interview with Miah Jeffra
Don’t we often write about what we struggle to understand?
Sketch Book Reviews: Poetry Unbound
I think when things in the world seem particularly bad/sad/awful, poetry can add a little light