Features & Reviews
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The Rumpus Interview with Kate Christensen
At what point in a writer’s career does their writing become able to be characterized? I mean specifically the point where you get to add “ian” or “esque” at the end of someone’s name
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The Chronicles of Narcissists
Hal Niedzviecki explores the motives, technologies, and consequences of Peep Culture.
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The Myth of Mary and the Mother of God
We encounter images of the Virgin Mary constantly: in churches, tattoos, and local news stories reporting frequent visual manifestations of her iconic form.
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The Rumpus Long Interview with Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers discusses Zeitoun, his optimism for print publications, what the kids are reading, and the advantage of attending a state school.
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The Storymatic
I’ve always been a sucker for writing prompts, even though they have a way of sometimes being cheesy, forced, and ultimately silly. But recently I came across this interesting product, a paper-based prompt generator that would seem to strike the…
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Wrack & Ruin
Don Lee returns to Rosarita Bay with a novel that features Brussels sprouts, kung fu divas, feuding brothers, and a complex look at ethnic identity.
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Binnie Kirshenbaum: The Last Book I Loved, A High Wind in Jamaica
Stories about pirates and orphans were my childhood favorites. Pirates, orphans, and those ever-so-enviable children–Madeline and Eloise–who lucked out with distant, absent, or dead parents: Pippi Longstocking, Huckleberry Finn, and Peter Pan, were winners for featuring distant parents and pirates.
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Working, as Adapted by Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar, the only famous comic-book creator who isn’t an artist himself, last month released a graphic adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working with The New Press. Dave Gilson summarizes it on Mother Jones as not “the most far-fetched attempt to…
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Yiyun Li’s “A Soldier Home”
Late last night I sat in the Labor & Delivery waiting room in the hospital where my brother and sister-in-law were preparing for the birth of their first child. They had checked in early that morning, but the baby still…
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North of the Border
A group of Mexican teenagers encounters a bizarre America in Luis Alberto Urrea’s latest novel.
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Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer is a Web site presenting the world with the following challenge/life-better-maker: “Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week.” Plus endnotes. The…
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Why Does No One Write About Their Day Job?
In a manifesto (er, “ideas piece”) about the importance of the workplace in writing, Alain de Botton calls on contemporary writers to write about work. “If a proverbial alien landed on earth,” he says, “and tried to figure out what human…