Essays
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The Art of Breaking Free
It’s difficult to break free. It’s difficult to think about what’s next and face the unknown. Over at The Barnes & Noble Review, The Rumpus’s Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay interviews the talented Karolina Waclawiak about her latest novel, The Invaders—women in…
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The Rumpus Book Club Presents… (With a Special Offer)
There’s never been a better time to join The Rumpus Book Club, either by the month or by the year. If you join now, we’ll throw in a bonus: your choice of the Rumpus Tote Bag or the Rumpus Quotes Mug! This…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
(Dan Weiss is out on tour with his band The Yellow Dress. He’ll be back on August 3rd.) It’s dubious whether these parents read either book. It’s not personal, it’s just privileged. Fact-checking the infamous nail salon story. Being bored in…
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Short, Sweet, and Simple
Roxane Gay recounts a few pithy and poignant lessons she learned from Ina Garten for The Butter.
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Roxane Gay on Forgiveness
In a powerful New York Times op-ed, Roxane Gay explains why she does not forgive the Charleston shooter: Over the weekend, newspapers across the country shared headlines of forgiveness from the families of the nine slain. The dominant media narrative…
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Roxane Gay on NYT’s Alabaster Summer Reading List
“Another day, another all-white list of recommended reading.” So begins a piece on NPR from Roxane Gay on the New York Times’s newly released summer reading list, which features zero authors of color. Gay argues that national outlets with wide-ranging audiences,…
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Five Things About Ashley Ford
Blogger and writer Ashley Ford is profiled at the Indianapolis Star. She talks about her childhood in Indiana, writing a memoir, and more: We’re never going to see eye-to-eye on what’s OK to write about. I’m not trying to embarrass or hurt…
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Chipotle to Publish Student Work
Chipotle’s Cultivating Thought campaign, which has put essays from the likes of George Saunders and Aziz Ansari on takeout bags and soda cups, will expand next year to include a contest for young writers. Students can submit an essay on…
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No Comment
An hour later. Still empty. This bothers me. I am embarrassed that it bothers me. But not embarrassed enough that it stops me from checking again.
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Those Kinds Of People are The Only People Here
Electric Literature posts a graduation speech from Vonnegut; he riffs on World War II, busboys, ambition, and suicide notes: A young woman told me a couple of years ago that she had applied for admission here. The man who interviewed…
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Oh, Indiana
The state of Indiana legalized discrimination last week allowing businesses to turn down customers for arbitrary reasons. Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay, who lives in Indiana, weighed in on the state of the state over at the Butter: The…
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This Week in Short Fiction: A Guide to AWP
It’s that time of year again, where writers young and old, from all corners of the country, come to congregate in one gigantic, frenetic, neurotic, alcohol-infused crowd, in a couple of fancy hotels no one can really afford, to stay…