cancer
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Elegy with Records on the Doorstep
The old music still filled pits in him like sawdust and wood glue do a nail hole. The songs didn’t say anything new over the years, but they provided home when he missed it.
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Voices on Addiction: Twenty-Five
I know that there are those who would argue that alcoholism is a singularly extreme condition, and I get that, but I’ve always felt clear that there’s a lot of overlap between alcoholism and plain old ordinary humanity.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #83: Lauren Grodstein
After writing several books (A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything) from a male point of view, Lauren Grodstein’s new novel, Our Short History, is an intimate glimpse into a woman’s life, at a critical juncture between life and…
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #20: This Mortal Coil
Socrates: All men are mortal. The Storming Bohemian: I’m a man. Socrates: Right, so… The Storming Bohemian: Uh oh.
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The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Yancy
Melissa Yancy discusses her debut story collection Dog Years, using her day job for inspiration, and being “an old curmudgeon at heart.”
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The Truth About Lying
My gut is a red, fiery drum, a beacon of rosy light. My instinct to run is a bright radioactive pink arrow, a bloody blade. I was correct.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #62: Julian Tepper
Upon publication of his first novel, Balls, author Julian Tepper received pointed advice from one Philip Roth: quit. What the elder statesman, on the verge of his own retirement, was trying to say is that the writing life is “just…
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat for Max Ritvo
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Kaveh Akbar, Shon Arieh-Lerer, Justin Boening, Sarah Blake, and Ariella Ritvo-Slifka about Max Ritvo’s Four Reincarnations. Max Ritvo died on August 23, 2016.
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Missing Lorraine
I guess I was somewhat relieved that my aunt realized she wouldn’t survive another day in her apartment, and I cautiously believed that she did want to live, at least for the next ninety days.
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In Sickness and Friendship and Jane Austen
Long before Curtis Sittenfeld was a New York Times bestselling author (Eligible), she was friends with Sam Park (This Burns My Heart). And they’re still friends: in an essay for the New Yorker, Sittenfeld chronicles their decades-long platonic romance, from early days collaborating…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Year of Light and Dark
It isn’t much of a contest to say that Julie Coyne is the single most inspirational human being I have ever met. And I am here—in Xela—in part because I could use a little inspiration.
