Random Brilliant Ephemera
“I won’t pretend to specialize or present myself as an expert in anything,” says Luc Sante, introducing his blog, Pinakothek. “Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my…
Features & Reviews
9225 posts
The Rumpus Interview with Don Waters
“That gorgeous cholla cactus outside the window also has horribly sharp spines. The desert is an incredibly violent environment. Plants and animals had to get mean as hell in order…
Fiction by La Farge
The long short-story is not a particularly popular form, but Paul La Farge packs life into exactly that bag. It’s a bag Kafka and Chekov used with gusto–think of the…
The Shorty Q & A with T Cooper
T Cooper is has been labeled a transgender writer, but to boil it down to a phrase so simple and limiting is an insult. After two critically acclaimed novels, Some…
Rude Brittania
Tim Fountain has made a career out of talking about sex, most famously in his 2005 sell-out one-man show ‘Sex Addict’. In a sort of reality show built around Gaydar,…
Something the Internet Can’t Do
Rodrigo Corral Design offers one reason we shouldn’t lose print media. These books, these beautiful, vibrant, resplendent books, remind us what it feels like to be human, to interact directly…
A Questioning Faith
A Review of Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads I have a special place in my heart for literature that juxtaposes the sacred and profane, that challenges perhaps the most successful meme…
More Rules of Writing
In 2001, Elmore Leonard, famous for his crime fiction and suspense thrillers, wrote a spicy essay for The New York Times cataloging his suggestions for good writing, or, rather, he…
The (Old) New Leader
In January 2006, The New Leader stopped print publication, an early omen to The Christian Science Monitor. But this eighty-five-year old magazine continues to publish bimonthly in the form of…
A Call for Writing Advice
Q: How Do You Crank Up to Write? A: “Discipline.” John Updike did it all the time, Richard Ford did it early in the morning, Nathaniel Hawthorne did it nonstop,…
The Sky Below
A.J. Liebling once remarked that the authors of newspaper obituaries are “a frustrated and usually anonymous tribe.” That’s certainly true of Gabriel Collins, narrator of Stacey D’Erasmo’s unusual new novel,…
The Shorty Q&A with Mary Roach
Mary Roach has written best-selling books about dead bodies, ghosts, and fucking. Her work is accessible and unflinching, presenting a variety of quirky or unsavory topics in a manner distinctive…