Features & Reviews
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Do Not Deny Me
The stories in Do Not Deny Me, Jean Thompson’s new collection, are concerned with main characters whose lives are scraped bare, who live in a world flattened by boredom and limitation.
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BEA Breakdown: What’s Going On and Where
BookExpo America is back in New York at the Jacob Javits Center with a show, conference and special events. What’s nice about Book Expo is that all the booksellers come to town, the bookstore owners and employees from across the…
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Murakami’s Latest – 1Q84
Original story at The Millions. You probably didn’t even know that Haruki Murakami has a new book coming out today. That’s because the hype has been largely suppressed, and also because it’s only coming out in Japanese. In fact the…
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THE LONELY VOICE #5, The Rumpus Short Story Column: We Are All Lizzie Borden
This happens sometimes. I got murder on the brain this morning.
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How To Be Inappropriate: A BookExpo America Guide
The first step in the modification of any behavior—inappropriate or otherwise—is to define said behavior. The purpose of this monograph, then, is not to advocate nor caution against any behavior for participants and exhibitors at BookExpo America, “Where the World…
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Book Expo Preview
While construction workers and stagehands were scurrying around the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City—which will play host to the BEA for the next four years—the CEO of the whole thing called a press conference preview, to break…
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Occupational Hazards by Jonathan Segura: An Ex-Girlfriend’s Review
I feel as if I’ve earned the right to review Occupational Hazards. Jonny and I have already loved and hated each other.
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Six Feet Under
The protagonist of Jim Krusoe’s new novel looks for his mother—in the afterlife, or in Cleveland.
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Hersh Inaugurates Center for Investigative Reporting @ BU
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh presided over the inauguration of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, a non-profit, university-based organization dedicated to training the next generation of investigative reporters.
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The Life of Ferlinghetti
Chris Felver’s doc about Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a little rough around the edges, with jumpy editing and a tendency to wander away from the subject of the moment without adequate explanation, but it’s an engaging film all the same, featuring a wealth of archival footage, home…
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Elizabeth Wurtzel on the Mental Instability of the Founding Fathers
In “The Pop Culture Clause,” Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay in the new issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Wurtzel asserts that American culture has produced Elvis, blue jeans and the gold rush because the Framers of the Constitution…
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The Exile and the Nomad Are Cousins: The Rumpus Original Combo with Ana Menendez
Ana Menendez’s new novel, The Last War, deals with Iraq, infidelity, self-deception, and exile.