What to Read When You Want to Rethink Motherhood
Rumpus editors share a Mother’s Day reading list to challenge traditional views of motherhood!
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Posts Tagged: alison bechdel
What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Women’s History
Rumpus editors share for their favorite writing that speaks to women’s history past, present, and future.
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Transformations: A Conversation with Genevieve Hudson
Genevieve Hudson discusses her debut story collection, PRETEND WE LIVE HERE.
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The Inadvertent Postmodernist: A Conversation with Sarah Schulman
Author and activist Sarah Schulman discusses her forthcoming novel, MAGGIE TERRY.
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What to Read When You Want to Read Women on Home
A list from Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters to celebrate the release of This Is the Place: Women Writing about Home.
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Rumpus Exclusive: Three Excerpts from AFTERWORDS
Three exclusive excerpts from …AFTERWORDS, a new series of distinctive commentaries on great works of contemporary literature from our friends at Fiction Advocate!
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What to Read When You Want to Write Like a Mother
A list of books that wrangle, directly or indirectly, with motherhood and all that comes with it (or its absence).
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Sound & Vision: Nicole Georges
Allyson McCabe talks with Nicole Georges, illustrator, zinester and educator, about her new book Fetch, how she got into the DIY punk scene, and family secrets.
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What to Read When Everyone Is Celebrating Dads
Whether you are celebrating your father or cursing his name this Father’s Day, here’s a list of very good books about fathers from writers we love.
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Visiting Abandoned Places: A Conversation with Kristen Radtke
Kristen Radtke discusses her illustrated memoir Imagine Wanting Only This, working with editors on graphic narratives, and visiting abandoned places.
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Learning to Live Alone through the Legacy of Mary Tyler Moore
Characters like Mary and Rhoda hadn’t been turned into stereotypes of single women in their thirties or career women or divorcees. They couldn’t be: they were the first.
...moreOff the Mainstream Map
For Bitch Media, Rumpus Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist interviews writer-actress Roberta Colindrez on her recent roles in Amazon’s adaptation of Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick and the Broadway adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, two powerful narratives centered on women. Colindrez believes in the power of stories: Theatre is—and I’m quoting someone very loosely—the […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Blanchfield
Poet and writer Brian Blanchfield talks about his essay collection Proxies, touring in support of a prose collection versus a poetry collection, and frottage.
...moreBinary Codes
No identity is visible from just one angle. Corinne Manning explains the importance of Alison Bechdel‘s “double representation”: It’s not that there are stories that are impossible to tell, just complicated—as storytellers we want to capture and express every nuance, to enable the reader, or the person listening to you, to fit something impossible, like […]
...moreRefusal to Read
At Slate, Jacob Brogan responds to the Duke freshman who has made the headlines for speaking out on his refusal to read Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, on the grounds that it is “pornographic”: Sex becomes pornographic when we detach it from its living, breathing context…He only sees those brief images as pornographic because […]
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Shadow Must Be Paid
A poet lives through the writing of poems inside his or her animal or sexual sides as a way to honor that aspect of our humanity.
...moreBechdel on Broadway
Part of what’s fascinating about the Broadway adaptation, with its script and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, is how closely it adheres to the outline and details of Bechdel’s story—yet so differs from the book that it seems to be a related but entirely original work. For the New York Review […]
...moreControversial Comics
Cartoonists tend to stick together because they have to; . . . their work is disproportionately singled out for suppression both abroad and in the U.S., while at the same time often regarded as not “serious” enough to deserve a full-throttle defense. Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, and Alison Bechdel talk with Salon about why they […]
...moreFamily Secrets
Memoirist, cartoonist, and creator of the famous Bechdel Test, Alison Bechdel talks to The Millions about the evolution of her art, winning a MacArthur “Genuis Grant,” and searching for answers in her past: I feel like in a way that’s just what my work is, it’s just these albums that I’m arranging and then rearranging, […]
...moreWorks to Watch Out For
If Alison Bechdel’s Genius grant weren’t reason enough to celebrate, she’s got another graphic memoir due in 2017. As the New York Times puts it: “The Secret to Superhuman Strength” is Ms. Bechdel’s third graphic memoir and chronicles her decades long obsession with various fitness and exercise fads, including downhill skiing, uphill skiing, rollerblading, martial […]
...moreIt Starts With People
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Heroes Con panel devoted to LGBT visibility in comics was hosted by Kate Leth, Bryan Pittard, Terry Moore, Eric Punzone, and Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. The sextet spoke on internal censorship, Internet trolls, and straddling gender boundaries in print: During Q & A, a fan asked how the panelists felt […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
In this, the first week of June, a band of storytellers joined hands and exhaled sweet stories that rolled out like a giant park full of empty hammocks waiting to hold readers through the long summer days… For example: On Tuesday, poet-storyteller Stuart Dybek released not one, but two short story collections: Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty […]
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The New York Comics Symposium: Amy Kurzweil & Charlie Boatner
The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium is a weekly forum for discussing the tradition and future of text/image work. Open to the public, it meets Monday nights 7-9 p.m. EST in New York City.
...moreDen Bechdel Testet
You may have heard of the Bechdel test, named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who popularized it in one of her comics: A movie or book passes the test if it contains a) at least two female characters, who b) talk to each other, about c) something other than men. It’s long been a way to […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel is a living legend (and I say this from the point of view of a queerish autobio cartoonist).
...moreAre You My Mother?
NPR shares a six-page excerpt from Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel’s latest graphic memoir. Here’s a conversation between Bechdel and the Paris Review. “There’s so much she hasn’t told me, and so many big obligatory questions that I didn’t touch on in this book. Like, what has it been like for my mother to […]
...moreBooks as Fetish Objects
Unpacking My Library introduces a new sub-genre to coffee table books: library porn.
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