Features & Reviews
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How to Make an Oscar Wao
“It was very late, and we were over at a friend’s house… (T)hat night we were just all hanging out and it was a bunch of Mexican bohemians and me and my Guatemalan buddy. And one of these Mexican cats…
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“Crowdfunding” and “Friendraising” a Shorty Q & A with Deanna Zandt
Deanna Zandt is writing a book. She has a contract with Berrett-Koehler, but the publishing house does not usually “give advances, relying instead on a more author-friendly royalty structure.”
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs are scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me. Sure, there have been a few fun, interesting updates and interviews, but most of what they’ve been saying makes me want to build a series of tunnels…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus Books has published a review of a memoir and three novels, as well as two interviews, one of which includes an excerpt from Robert Sullivan’s book The Thoreau You Don’t Know.
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Irish Writers Online
When my wife and I signed the lease on our new place, we fell into a discussion with our new landlord about writing and writers; not surprisingly, he’d come to the Rumpus to check out my work, and ended up…
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Words on Paper Aren’t Going Anywhere
“The mission for book publishers and print media at large should be to create a product that is irreplaceable and indispensable.” Eric Obenauf, the publisher of Two-Dollar Radio, doesn’t think that print is dying. Changing? Certainly. But disappearing? No:
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Jonathan Ames Talks Sex, Frivolity, and Egocentrism
Rumpus contributor Jonathan Ames recently got interviewed by a little magazine called Time. Clearly this upstart Time rag is hopping on the Rumpus’ pro-Ames bandwagon, but we won’t begrudge them. How can you NOT want to learn more about a…
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Life Is Beautiful
Vicki Forman’s Bakeless Prize-winning memoir recounts the premature births, and deaths, of her children.
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“Empire Of Illusion,” A Book I Haven’t Read Yet
One of the great things about the bookstore business is you get to be the first to see what’s new. And when you work for a small, used bookstore, the buyers are pretty picky about what they want to carry,…
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Small Is Not Cute, It’s Huge
“I was traveling and barely understood how I’d ended up there on a Ferris wheel at night, dangling above a town I didn’t know, thousands of miles from anyone I knew well, looking out at the dark cliffs, ocean, and…
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The Book I Need For My Birthday
Since I’m turning thirty in early September and starting to feel a new-found urgency coupled with a blasé acceptance of life’s fast and furious pace, I wonder about the things in life I still need. Desire is one thing. I…
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It Has Ever Been Thus
“Printed books have been in existence for four hundred years at the most, and already they pile up in certain countries in such a way as threaten the old balance of the planet. Civilization has arrived at the most unexpected…