amy hempel
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Terese Mailhot
Terese Mailhot discusses her debut memoir, Heart Berries, writing candidly about one’s personal life, and the good that can come from anger.
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Scripting New Narratives: Mandy Len Catron’s How to Fall in Love with Anyone
I can’t help but wonder what if, in detangling love stories and our relationships to them, Catron is building yet another narrative—an anti-narrative, perhaps—of love.
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This Week in Short Fiction
We’re halfway through June, and though the first day of summer isn’t technically until June 21, I think we can all agree that we’re well into the sweltering season. This week’s story captures those quintessential staples of summer—swimming pools, soft serve,…
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The Rumpus Interview with Lee Clay Johnson
Lee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
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Girlhood Comes Home to Roost
I think I always knew this story about the rural road where I grew up needed to be told. At the Believer, Annie DeWitt talks to Brandon Hobson about realism, ambiguity, and how her own childhood folds into her new…
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The Rumpus Interview with Rebecca Schiff
Rebecca Schiff discusses her debut collection The Bed That Moved, choosing narrators who share similarities with each other and with herself, and whether feminism and fiction-writing conflict.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #72: Urban Pastoral
It’s like a landscape that you can’t know until you’ve seen it through four seasons, until you’ve seen it on days gray and bright.
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
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Notable NYC: 7/4–7/10
Saturday 7/4: Macy’s celebrates independence from the English King with fireworks. East River, 9 p.m., free. Monday 7/6: Tony Hoagland reads from Twenty Poems That Could Save America. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Tuesday 7/7: Julia Fierro celebrates the paperback release…
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Characters Aren’t the Enemy
I’ll admit that I was so into sentence construction when I started working with Amy that I had zero interest in character development. Hempel subtly persuaded me, partially through introducing me to radical prose stylists who also care about their…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I couldn’t wait to read it, but I was also infinitely patient. It’s that delayed gratification thing. I’m a sucker for it, and there are books that are worth the wait.
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Write Your Worst Secret
Amy Hempel started writing fiction in her late twenties when she took a workshop with Gordon Lish at Columbia; she stayed in this workshop as a student for years. In an interview with The Paris Review, Hempel recalls her first…