Essays
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The Big Idea: Eula Biss
On Immunity author Eula Biss speaks to Suzanne Koven about mythology, personal freedom, and the history of vaccines.
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Still Thinking Through All This
Though she admits to be “still thinking through all this,” Roxane Gay offers her thoughts on the Lena Dunham controversy on her Tumblr.
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Weekly Geekery
If you are a white man, your Internet is different than other internets. Hackers are going offline and embracing print. Content moderators keep your Internet from being worse. A comprehensive history of the reviled banner ad. Facebook is changing journalism.…
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Slouching Toward Didion
The Daily Beast takes a look at the history of the female essayist from Didion to Dunham: From cultural critic Susan Sontag and journalist-turned-screenwriter-turned-novelist (and Dunham’s mentor) Nora Ephron, and on through to the host of talented female essayists writing today,…
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Slowly Becoming
Roxane Gay speaks out on ‘black ambition’ at VQR: I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe…
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The Feminist Novel
A feminist novel, then, is one that not only deals explicitly with the stories and thereby the lives of women; it is also a novel that illuminates some aspect of the female condition and/or offers some kind of imperative for…
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Take a Stab: An Essay
In anticipation of the Best American Essays 2014, which will come out later this week from Houghton Mifflin, the New Yorker brings us an adaptation of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s introduction to the anthology—a historical investigation of the word “essay.” Sullivan…
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A Feminist Education
As I continue reading Gay’s book, I can’t help but think of how my definition of myself as a feminist has evolved over the years. Looking back over the past 15 years, in particular, I can mark this evolution by…
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Roxane Gay Will Butter The Toast
Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay will helm a new Internet vertical being launched by The Toast. The Butter will primarily include content drawn from submissions, although Gay herself plans on posting two to three times a week. Contributors will be…
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Notable NYC: 9/20–9/26
Saturday 9/20: Amber Atiya, Keegan Lester, Emily Present, Cecily Iddings, Katie Fowley, Liz Clark Wessel, Lucia Stacey, Anna Marschalk-Burns, Alexis Pope, Amy Lawless, and Bridget Talone celebrate the latest issue of The Atlas Review. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Paulo Scott,…
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Writers for Choice
When she realized her local Planned Parenthood was struggling to stay open, author and board member Lauren Groff recruited two-dozen other writers to auction off various literary swag in a fundraising event called The Choice Auction. The group, which included…
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A Footnotes Advocacy
Many readers, and perhaps some publishers, seem to view endnotes, indexes, and the like as gratuitous dressing—the literary equivalent of purple kale leaves at the edges of the crudités platter. You put them there to round out and dignify the…