characters
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The Genius and the Nobody: Lynne Tillman’s Men and Apparitions
Make it new, the modernists said. But how to rebuild the living body?
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Katia D. Ulysse
Katia D. Ulysse discusses her forthcoming novel, Mouths Don’t Speak, the importance of religion and music in the novel and in Haitian culture, and why Haiti will always be “home.”
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jon McGregor
Jon McGregor discusses his newest novel, Reservoir 13, his writing process, and why he chose not to sidestep the “missing girl” trope.
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On Searching for Honesty in Writing: An Interview with Blake Nelson
Blake Nelson discusses his new book, Boy, letting his characters find their own fates, and possibly, maybe, being just the right amount of famous.
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The Rumpus Interview with Patrick Ryan
Patrick Ryan discusses his new collection The Dream Life of Astronauts, the “bad old days,” and the human need to believe that everything will turn out okay in the end (even when we know it won’t).
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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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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Booker
Brian Booker discusses his debut collection Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, giving characters strange and unusual names, and sleeping sickness.
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Remembering Killed-Off Characters
In an epic confessional letter at Lit Hub, author Stuart Nadler mourns all the characters he’s abandoned, maimed, and murdered for the sake of the grueling writing process. These lost creations and their universes live on in his memories and drafts…
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In Conversation with Elizabeth Strout
I love all my characters; every single person I write about, I love. So as I write them, I don’t care how badly they misbehave, because they are who they are, they do what they do. In an interview with…
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This Week in Short Fiction
It’s July, and the summer issues of literary magazines are rolling off both the physical and cyber presses, including Virginia Quarterly Review, which this week shared a story from its summer print issue online. In “Dixon” by Bret Anthony Johnston,…
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Who Are You Writing For?
In the American imagination the black woman, whether light skinned or dark, is already a sexualized entity, a character upon which so many stereotypes are projected. But as a black woman writing these characters, I need to write beyond the…
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Influencing Writing by Reading
Reading is an important part of developing as a writer. But what happens when all the books and authors we read are a homogenous group of white males? Non-white, non-male writers may still end up defaulting to writing about white male…