Features & Reviews
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Joy in Persistence: Siri Hustvedt on Writing and the Need for Adaptive Grandiosity
Everyone, even the most tell-all writer, withholds something in the interests of protecting herself or others, but my interest in my own stories has always been to use them to illustrate larger stories about the culture . . .
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Eva Jurczyk
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Eva Jurczyk about her debut novel, Department of Rare Books & Special Collections (Poisoned Pen Press, January 2022), and its structure, art capers, and more. This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion.…
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Your Job is to Tell the Truth: A Conversation with Edgar Gomez about High-Risk Homosexual
…if I’m going to acknowledge my fear, finding something about it that’s funny helps it go down easier. That’s how I survive.
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In Praise of Young Little Luxuries: Rax King’s Tacky
Her enthusiasm . . . leaves you a little raw, thinking about the things in your own adolescence you could have enjoyed more if you hadn’t learned so early the most ironic ways to protect your heart . . .
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A Devotee of the Interconnectedness of Time: A Conversation with Ariel Delgado Dixon
“When I teach, my biggest hobby horse is specificity . . . Even boring people are specifically boring.”
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What to Read When Celebrating Black History
Rumpus editors share a list of books to celebrate Black History Month!
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Hope is the Best Strategy: A Conversation with Sharman Apt Russell
As we start seeing the effects of climate change, of people struggling with drought and struggling with erratic weather patterns and flooding, we have to accept our responsibility.
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A Gentle Touch: Annie Hartnett’s Unlikely Animals
What’s special about Hartnett’s chorus of the dead, though, is that they stress the tension between overlapping realities.
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Revelation is Absurd: A Conversation with Adrian Nathan West
…we live in a culture that’s at once euphemistic and profoundly hyperbolic, where people try as hard as possible to not actually be saying anything so that they can never be accused of holding any position. Whereas it’s important to…
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The Woman in My Head: A Conversation with Emily Maloney
There’s a lot of rules or feelings about how writing a book should be, but very little of that actually corresponds with reality.
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What It Means to be Human: Natashia Deón’s The Perishing
A review of THE PERISHING: “[H]ope keeps you in the ring, pushing off the ropes. Hope keeps you in the fight.”
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Letter to a Poet: Matthew Olzmann on Writing Humor & Befriending Whales
Matthew Olzmann: [S]uddenly the poem becomes this meditation on mortality, but at no point do you think, “Oh my gosh, Yusef, why is he talking to a maggot or how does he know this maggot? Or what kind of relationship…