Posts Tagged: authors

The Lives of Others

By

We’ve always been fascinated by the possibility of understanding the person behind the work. For Lit Hub, Heller McAlpin examines a long tradition of writing about writers: There’s a special frisson of pleasure in reading about writers’ early struggles when you know what the future holds for them—which in the case of most of these […]

...more

The Missing Hong Kong Booksellers: A Rumpus Roundup

By

Hong Kong functions as a semi-autonomous city-state, a condition imposed when the United Kingdom ceded control to Beijing. Hong Kong’s special status has allowed its independent bookstores to sell two kinds of books banned in mainland China: political books and smut. But late last year, four associates of Causeway Bay Books, an independent bookseller specializing […]

...more

The Writer’s Voice on Social Media

By

Voice is not a commodity but the slow accretion of individual perspective. This is a writer’s most valuable asset… Social media isn’t a distraction from the seriousness of what he’s published. It’s an affirmation of his argument’s importance. Authors today face a unique situation: the presence of social media fueling society’s profound hunger for transparency […]

...more

Who Wants to Be a Writer

By

A recent poll by YouGuv, intended to determine the most desired professions for Britons, suggests a strong interest in expanding the ranks of authors and academics. Though common conception holds these groups to be prone to an embattled posture, forever defending an endangered tradition of bookishness, it seems that writers still hold a position of […]

...more

Seriously Serious

By

Over at the Paris Review, Jason Novak has taken up the pen again; this time, he’s turned to authors and their eccentricities. Among his observations: “Somewhere Hemingway is sitting quietly at his desk. Pouring another bull. And fighting another drink.” Other targets include Don DeLillo, Jane Austen, Hegel, Nabokov, Heidegger, and the state of Publishing […]

...more

A Writer’s Best Friend

By

As the saying has it, a dog is a man’s best friend, but dogs are not always the pets of choice among the literary greats. Ernest Hemingway had his six-toed cats, Flannery O’Connor had her peacocks, and Vladimir Nabokov had his butterflies as Rumpus contributor Tim Taranto illustrates in his piece “Author’s Best Friend: The […]

...more

“Twitter For Authors”

By

The LA Times reports that Twitter has released a how-to-manual titled “Twitter for Authors.” The guide details six tips particularly geared towards writers, some of which include the not-so-helpful “Be Authentic, Be Yourself,” and “Above All, Have Fun.” Nowadays many authors use the social networking site as a means of self-promotion, and entire transcontinental book […]

...more

Novelist disappears into illness, addiction

By

Kaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious” best-selling author to her 2008 arrest for forging hydrocodone prescriptions to her disappearance into mental […]

...more

Welcome to Rumpus Books

By

At The Rumpus, we believe that a healthy literary culture is one which embraces writing of all kinds, by authors of all stripes – young and old, established and emerging, traditional and experimental, writing from the margins or from (or about) the heart of mainstream culture, published by “major” houses or by smaller presses.

...more

The Rumpus in your inbox!

* indicates required