Write What You Know: Random Book Links by Elissa Bassist
James Wolcott’s review of Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick summed up in one piece of advice: skip the first third of the book. Unlike Hemingway, Plath, Wolfe, et al., Updike…
Features & Reviews
9210 posts
The Rumpus Interview with Van Jones
Van Jones is an award-winning activist, bestselling author, orator, and political advisor. I helped him birth his first book, The Green Collar Economy (Harper One, 2008).
Faint Praise for “Praise Song”
As a poet, I appreciate the gesture made toward the arts when the President-elect asks a poet to present a work at his or her inauguration.
From Bank Robber To Author: Joe Loya’s Journey
IN HIS OWN WORDS: JOE LOYA AS TOLD TO ALIX LAMBERT
Literary Sports Links By Brian Schwartz
You might think that Terrell Owens, the star wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, would be a bit leery of the publishing business. After all, this is the man who…
Poetic Lives Online: Random Poetry Links by Brian Spears
The inaugural poem is sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the poetry world for now, and with good reason. An inaugural poem is even rarer than the Olympics,…
A (Not- comprehensive) List of Books That Changed The World
Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield Banana: The fate of the fruit that changed the world by Dan Koeppel How William Shatner…
Janet Malcolm on a Small Body of Early Twentieth Century Fiction
Janet Malcolm reaches into the archives of her childhood and discusses a hardly-known American novelist in an essay from the New York Review of Books. Malcolm reviews
Mr. Alarcon Goes to Vegas
On Voting, People Who Collect the Folk Art of People With Whom They Have No Cultural Connection, and the Red-faced Waitress Who Pulled The Plug
Obama Gets Advice from America’s Kids
Hot off the presses is a new book by kids titled Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country. Students of non-profit writing center 826 Valencia have
Doughnuts & the Death of Journalism
What do doughnuts and the internet’s erosion of journalism have in common?
