Features & Reviews
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Little Books
Kendra Grant Malone, author of Love Your Friends and Not Your Lovers (bore parade), has just released her most recent chapbook, Rape Children, for only $3 through J.A. Tyler‘s micro-press MLP Books. More about Tyler’s projects here, and you can…
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Brotherly Love
My old man was like Zeus’s father Cronos: he couldn’t bear the idea that any of his children might surpass him. Life radiated from the central pulse of his scrap-metal yard; the world beyond it seemed to make him defensive…
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Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing
Lydia Peelle’s stories focus on scurrilous ne’er-do-wells who flail about in circumstances beyond their control.
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Aaron Gilbreath: The Last Book I Loved, Ray
I used to think I was somewhat daring as a reader, but apparently I was not. After reading Barry Hannah’s story collection Airships, I bought five of his other books in a flurry of excitement; then they sat there on…
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The Rumpus Interview With Uwem Akpan
“After the phone call from The New Yorker, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But then I told God I would talk to Him another time and darted home.”
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The Adderall Diaries
The Adderall Diaries page has been updated to include a great review that ran today in Bookslut and more information on our low income galley giveaway. More here.
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Save the Words
By the end of my last “relationship,” we had so few words left for each other. How many other ways could we say, “I’m sorry” or “I unlove you” or “fuck you”? We used up all the words we knew…
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Mourning the Book
I expected to feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose,” but instead I felt lost, grief-stricken. It was a mixture of sadness for the main character and a fear that I might yet ruin…
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Adam Robinson: The Last Book I Loved, Alaska
I can’t figure out why James Michener gets such short shrift. Is it because he’s too popular? Or because he had help with his painstaking geographical research? The critical disregard doesn’t bother me, though, except that I wish there was…
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Diary of a Young Survivor
A playwright’s first novel takes on adolescence and grief in a post-9/11 world
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Rebecca Solnit on Writing What Matters
In The Believer, Rebecca Solnit gives some advice I hope to someday learn to follow completely: “Apolitical is a political position, yes, and a dreary one. The choice by a lot of young writers to hide out among dinky, dainty, and…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs are full of answers. Listen to them. Vonnegut knew why we are all such drama queens (there are charts involved). A thought-provoking take on writing a satisfying ending. The Book Bench points out that CNN…