Other
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The Mystery of Skeleton Lake
Weird Event No. 1: Hundreds of human skeletons are found in and around a lake in India. Weird Event No. 2: Testing shows that the bones are from around the year 850 and that every one of the hundreds died…
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Reaching Across the Bay Bridge
In a sort of Bay Area meeting of minds, Scott Hutchins, author of a novel about San Francisco and Silicon Valley, profiles Michael Chabon, whose latest novel takes place mainly in Oakland and Berkeley. Read it to learn about Chabon’s…
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Words of Wisdom from Writers
It’s commencement speech season, and New York Daily News‘s books blog has a roundup of some of the best graduation advice from literary figures. Like this, from Toni Morrison: …art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
The simple pleasure of great art in ugly rooms. Aquanauts are the new thing you guys. This is a story about very old moss or whatever. Now we can turn concrete into liquid metal (this is assuming we are scientists).…
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Twenty-Seven
For two days, I fight the story welling up in me, denying the itch of the burn, the angry redness biting at my skin. And then I wake up the third day and say to myself, “My mom was raped…
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Cecil Castellucci Readings for Kids and Grownups This Weekend
Bay Area readers, you’re in for a treat. Our Letters for Kids editor Cecil Castellucci has a new picture book out, and you can go see her read it in both Alameda and Berkeley this weekend! The book is called Odd…
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #184
HIPPOS ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing hippos.
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A Literary Hoax as Weird as the Dickens
“When Dickens Met Dostoevsky,” a recent article in the Times Literary Supplement, starts out at the highest echelons of writerdom: Michiko Kakutani discusses an encounter between Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky, in which Dickens describes creating his stories’ villains from his…
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The Agony of Adjuncts
This week, Chronicle of Higher Education advice-columnist “Ms. Mentor” counsels a recent MFA graduate on her career options. The recent grad is considering a gig as an adjunct professor teaching composition, but the academic scene Ms. Mentor sketches is pretty grim:…
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Lydia Davis and Twitter: A Match Made in Heaven
For some writers, Twitter isn’t a newfangled distraction but rather an extension of the art they’ve been making all along. Lydia Davis, whose stories often span only a few sentences, plans to give the microblogging platform a try as a…
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Memorial Day Weekend Rumpus Roundup
We hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend. We certainly did—we chowed down on delicious Rumpus features.
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
This week in whimsy: 3-d foam art and the descriptive camera. Also this is a story about a dachshund and his lion best friend. It is for you. Now is a good time to talk some more about the death…