Nothing Foreign about It: Talking with Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad discusses his debut novel American War, suicide terrorism, fossil fuels, and blankets.
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Posts Tagged: A Rumpus Interview
The Woman Behind the Curtain Pulling the Levers: Talking with Zinzi Clemmons
Zinzi Clemmons on What We Lose, representations of blackness, and life’s influences on writing.
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What Appears to Be Fiction: A Conversation with Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss discusses her new novel Forest Dark, provoking questions about reality with her work, and trusting readers to think for themselves.
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“The Book I Said I Would Never Write”: Talking with Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist discusses The White City, her first novel to be translated to English, and the idea of a writer’s persona out in the world versus a just being a writer, writing.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Faith Adiele
Faith Adiele discusses what it means to be a good literary citizen, the importance of decolonizing travel writing, and how she wants to change the way Black stories are being told.
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An Eerie Prescience: Talking with Joyce Carol Oates
Author Joyce Carol Oates discusses how the political climate affected the writing of her latest novel, A Book of American Martyrs, how she uses Twitter, and why predictions are a waste of time.
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An Erasure of Distance: Traveling in Circles with Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander talks about his new novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, the experience of being interviewed, and why he believes books can save lives.
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The Logic of the Book: Talking with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich discusses The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, the importance of narrative structure, and the difference between facts and stories.
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The Inner and Outer Self: A Conversation with Sylvia Brownrigg
Sylvia Brownrigg discusses Pages For Her and returning to its world of characters, the inner voices she heeds and those she silences, and who she imagines her readers to be.
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What If We Were Allowed to Do Anything We Wanted?: A Conversation with Clare Beams
Clare Beams on We Show What We Have Learned and the “living strangeness” of short fiction.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #100: Jennifer Colville
From the tender age of eight, Jennifer Colville has known herself to be a visual artist.
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Words as Events: A Conversation with Jeff Wood
Jeff Wood discusses The Glacier, his genre-bending book combining novel, poetry, screenplay, and collage, how heritage has become a brand, and the American Midwest.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #99: Bruce Snow
The summer after Bruce Snow graduated from the University of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina arrived in his hometown.
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Love Thy Neighbor: Talking with Yewande Omotoso
Writer, poet, and architect Yewande Omotoso discusses her second novel, The Woman Next Door, Cape Town’s haunting beauty, and mythologies about motherhood.
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Analyzing the Why: A Conversation with Jonathan Reiss
Jonathan Reiss discusses his debut novel Getting Off, his transition from actor to writer, his own past drug use, and our country’s current opioid epidemic.
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The Driving Thing of It: A Conversation with Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey discusses his decades-long music career, working on cover songs written in another language, and finding longevity in the music business.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #98: Nicky Nodjoumi
Though some readers of The Rumpus may not have heard of Nicky Nodjoumi, in his native Iran he has achieved the status of a rock star.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth talks about her latest book, Buckskin Cocaine, persevering through rejection, and white writers writing Native characters.
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Wisdom Is a Double-Edged Sword: Talking with Jay Baron Nicorvo
Jay Baron Nicorvo discusses his debut novel, The Standard Grand, how easy it is for civilians to forget about soldiers and veterans, and his longstanding love of animals.
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Truth and Beauty: Talking with Joshua Wolf Shenk
The new Editor-in-Chief of The Believer dismantles stereotypes of Las Vegas, discusses the magazine’s acquisition, and makes a case for bringing journalism into the academy.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #97: Peg Alford Pursell
Peg Alford Pursell discusses SHOW HER A FLOWER, A BIRD, A SHADOW, openness, brevity, lyricism, and the benefit of dwelling in our emotions.
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The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.
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On Searching for Honesty in Writing: An Interview with Blake Nelson
Blake Nelson discusses his new book, Boy, letting his characters find their own fates, and possibly, maybe, being just the right amount of famous.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #96: Donna Baier Stein
Colorado’s Baby Doe Tabor was a bad ass. Born in 1854, ‘Lizzie,’ as she was known, bucked social norms of her day. In an era when silver miners believed it bad luck to even speak to a woman before descending into the mines, Lizzie worked alongside her male counterparts in the damp, dark underground caverns. […]
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In Between the In-Between: Talking with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang discusses her story collection Sour Heart, trying to escape the past, collective versus individual responsibility for trauma, and love as imprisonment.
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Can We Even Trust Ourselves?: A Conversation with Jac Jemc
Jac Jemc discusses The Grip of It, revision, and returning to the theme of trustworthiness again and again.
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The Human Cost: Discussing Political Storytelling with Olivia Kate Cerrone
Olivia Kate Cerrone discusses her novella The Hunger Saint and the significance of historical fiction.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #95: Gabe Habash
Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida is a three-hundred page manic unraveling of the titular Stephen’s psyche, told over the course of one season of collegiate wrestling. In the opening pages, Stephen states his intentions in no ambiguous terms: he is going to win the NCAA Division Four wrestling championship. The novel is the fast-paced story of […]
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Empathy Is Cheap: A Conversation with Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris discusses his memoir Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, gentrification in New York City and Brooklyn, the homogenization of American cities by corporate America, and whiteness of film culture.
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Misfits and Marriage: Talking with Taylor Larsen
Taylor Larsen discusses her debut novel, Stranger, Father, Beloved, writing about New England, falling in love with her characters, and the surprises of debut authorship.
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