Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jessica Berger Gross
Jessica Berger Gross discusses her new memoir, Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home, walking away from her parents age of twenty-eight, and the importance of boundaries.
Sari Botton
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Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jason Diamond
Jason Diamond discusses his memoir Searching for John Hughes, confronting his childhood abuse, avoiding his parents, and writing about all of it.
Conversations with Writers Braver than Me: Anne Roiphe
Anne Roiphe on respecting writers’ freedom to express the truth of their experiences, while also respecting their subjects’ prerogative to shun them for it.
Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me: Samantha Irby
Sari Botton sits down with humorist Samantha Irby to talk sex, family conflicts, and the creative freedom of being an orphan.
Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me: Rebecca Walker
Sari Botton and Rebecca Walker talk about the challenges of writing about parents, becoming estranged from them, and then moving together past estrangement, to eventually heal the rift.
Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me: Melissa Febos
In Whip Smart, Melissa Febos unflinchingly chronicles five years in her early twenties when she was a dominatrix and heroin user. But the book is about so much more than those details.
Confessions of a Good Girl
In my thirties, I have had two abortions, six years apart. I tell no one. I perpetuate the shame of every woman who has ever chosen to terminate an unwelcome pregnancy—with my silence.
Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me: Marco Roth
Sometimes I fantasize about expanding these conversations beyond the one-on-one—getting a few particular writers into a room together to discuss the risky business of writing the sort of memoir or…
The Sweet Smell of Excess
Al-Anon sucked. If I hadn’t been too broke for therapy, I’d never have taken a friend’s advice to attend those awful meetings. They were worse than the AA meetings I’d…
Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me: Cheryl Strayed
Sari Botton talks with Cheryl Strayed about how she keeps finding the courage to be honest in her work—about herself and others around her.
Happy Audio Book Month
Did you know that it’s Audio Book Month? I’m going to guess you didn’t. It’s hard for me to imagine too many Rumpus readers habitually listening to books read aloud…
Ghosts Are Real, At Least In Publishing
"Ghostwriter" is a problematic word. It gives people the idea that we have some kind of other worldly power; that we’re able to hover over clients somewhere in the ether and read their minds, then write their books using only our own words.