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Join NOW!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 […]
...moreThere’s no law against asking strangers about their lives and feelings, although sometimes it really feels like there is. Do you know which books you’d take with you if you were stranded on an island? Well, Miranda July does. Check out her list over at the New York Times.
...moreIn an interview with the New York Times’s Sunday Book Review, author Roger Rosenblatt reveals his favorite books, authors, and poems, and who he’d want to write his life story (you’ll never guess who it is!).
...moreHong 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 […]
...moreVoice 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 […]
...moreA 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 […]
...moreOver 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 […]
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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 […]
...moreSylvia Plath may not be best known for her paper dolls, but we don’t usually envision Mark Twain as an avid fan of scrapbooking, either. Check out this cool collection of the artwork of famous authors, which also includes William Burroughs’s gunshot paintings and Charles Bukowski’s watercolors.
...moreThe 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 […]
...moreA woman who claimed a novelist and former friend based the character of a sexually promiscuous alcoholic on her has won a $100,000 libel award from a Georgia jury. Vicki Stewart claimed that Haywood Smith, a former childhood friend, used her as the basis for a character in her novel The Red Hat Club. During […]
...moreKaye 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 […]
...moreAt 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.
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