The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #182: Valerie Nieman
“We’re all freaks, all wanderers, all seekers.”
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Posts Tagged: Appalachia
Reimagining Jesus: A Conversation with Savannah Sipple
Savannah Sipple discusses her debut collection, WWJD AND OTHER POEMS.
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Teeth: An Oral History
Few people can tell that my smile is literally fake.
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Both the Wound and the Healing: Talking with Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman discusses her debut memoir, SOUNDS LIKE TITANIC.
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The Queer Syllabus: Velvet Goldmine by Todd Haynes
In The Queer Syllabus, writers nominate works for a new canon of queer literature.
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Pulling the Thread Through: Talking with Tina Alexis Allen
Tina Alexis Allen discusses her memoir, HIDING OUT.
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Wide-Eyed and Awed: Keegan Lester’s this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all I had so I drew it
Lester often weaves past and present, the personal and the vast into one poem, leaping between these seeming opposites.
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A Proof for Truth
Truth is perspective—a plane or a sphere—which makes it feel slippery. Truth is not absolute in the ways that we want it to be.
...morePost-Election Dispatch: Charleston, SC
Right now as I write this, smoke from fires in the southeastern Appalachian Mountains haze the morning. We’re under orange alert—the air quality bad enough that schoolchildren will stay indoors today. This morning the coastal flooding is up again thanks to the powerful tidal pulls of the recent supermoon. On my errand this morning, I […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #55: Donald Ray Pollock
Donald Ray Pollock has been steadily serving up plates of mild horror since his first book of short stories, Knockemstiff, appeared in 2008. Pollock followed the explosion of Knockemstiff with The Devil All the Time, in 2011, his first novel, which also bordered on the genre of mystery, again with generous servings of darkness. His […]
...moreThe 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.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Jonathan Corcoran
Jonathan Corcoran discusses his debut collection The Rope Swing, Appalachian writing communities, getting disowned by his family for coming out, and his father’s death.
...moreStop Demonizing Fearless Women
At Electric Literature, Bronwyn Averett interviews Julia Franks about her debut novel, Over the Plain Houses. The novel is set in a small town Appalachian Village, and explores “the government’s role in the lives of individuals, the responsibility of humans toward the environment, and the place of women within their communities.” On the latter topic, Franks says: When women […]
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Behind Trees: Hiding and Finding Yourself in The Sims
As I became increasingly jealous of the boys, I got angrier. This was complex because I spent the days worshipping them.
...moreSong of the Day: “Hard To Tell”
The genre of bluegrass receives its fair share of criticism. Considered by some to be a backwater of the teeming estuary of American music known as country, bluegrass, characterized by a decidedly twangier sound, gets unfairly stereotyped as the redneck’s music of choice and relegated to straw-chewing Appalachian family reunions and backyard barbecues. But innovative and technically-gifted bands […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Karen Salyer McElmurray
Karen Salyer McElmurray talks about academia, the relationship between flaws and perfection, writing memoir, and the “tapestry” of writers who inspire her.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Poppies
Poppies might bloom for years following a fire, but eventually will quit blooming until the next fire comes through. In the forests around my hometown, there are good fires and bad fires. It is sometimes difficult in the beginning to tell the difference.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #62: Stillness as Metaphor
I am after a music that renders life as it is, and which invites in the intermittent pulsations of life.
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The Rumpus Interview with Josh Weil
Writer Josh Weil talks about his novel, The Great Glass Sea, magical realism vs. science fiction, Russia’s experiments with mirrored satellites, his early days as an aspiring playwright, and how he uses fear as a fuel to accomplish his work.
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For Lack of Anything Better
The curse of being a writer is knowing other people. I need other people (to write about) but I can’t handle other people (the way I can literary characters).
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An Epic in Three Words
“I am strong. Could I really have any other name?”
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Against Everything
The mountains of Alabama are small mountains—foothills, really—but they are mine like a sports team is mine—like a football game (which I have for so long been near but have not really, really seen) is mine—as in the phrase “We scored! We scored!”
...morePicturing Appalachia
There’s a bite-sized symposium about the challenges of photographing Appalachia happening over at the Oxford American right now, and it’s a great read. In his essay, “Looking Without Fear,” Roger May writes: Recently, I was thinking about my grandfather and missing him a great deal. I decided to flip through his bible where, throughout the […]
...moreRumpus Sound Takes: Appalachian Punk and Authenticity’s Chimera
O’Death Outside (Ernest Jenning Record Co.) Don’t let the banjo fool you. For all their eclecticism, Brooklyn-based O’Death’s frame of reference remains firmly indie—strained male tenor singing abstruse lyrics over pop arrangements.
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