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
Features & Reviews
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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?
Jonathan Baumbach Superlink
Writing (a novel, this post, anything) is “a bit like love.” Few are in it for the money or self-esteem; you pursue it because you can’t not and because at…
The Shorty Q&A With Robin Maxwell
Female pirates, Leonardo DaVinci’s mother and cross-dressing, the sex lives of kings. Robin Maxwell writes about the parts of history that don’t air on PBS specials.
The Rumpus Interview with Yiyun Li
I first interviewed Yiyun Li in 2005 when she won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, among many other awards, for her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.…
Why I Write Fiction
by RABIH ALAMEDDINE When I was about to publish my first novel, a writer tried to prepare me for what was to come. It doesn’t matter what novel you write,…
Poetry Shakedown
Kay Ryan’s tarot cards, the return of the rhyme, Mennonite matriarchs, Mao’s poems, Women’s Work, and Blago’s versification
Companion Links to Ariel Levy’s Article on The Joy of Sex
“If you are a child of the seventies and were raised on The Joy of Sex, you are not likely to have forgotten the illustrations.”
Poetic Lives Online: Random Poetry Links by Brian Spears
With the inauguration of Barack Obama swiftly approaching (though not swiftly enough for some), the return of an inaugural poet/poem has gotten some play.
1929 All Over Again, In Japanese Literature
From Adbusters: “As they endure the nightly mundanity of the convenience store or the daytime lobotomy of waving red sticks at traffic jams, the freeter part-timers know that Kanikosen is…