Rumpus Exclusive: The Intro to PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019
A list like this will probably mean more to you once you’ve read the book.
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Posts Tagged: debut authors
Misfits and Marriage: Talking with Taylor Larsen
Taylor Larsen discusses her debut novel, Stranger, Father, Beloved, writing about New England, falling in love with her characters, and the surprises of debut authorship.
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Finding Comfort in the Discomfort: Talking with Juan Martinez
Juan Martinez discusses his debut collection Best Worst American, his relationship to the English language, and why Nabokov ruined his writing for years.
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Lesley Nneka Arimah’s Characters Muscle Their Way through Girlhood
In our current political climate with its rampant animosity towards immigrants, Arimah offers a humanizing portrait of both the Nigerian citizen and first generation young female immigrant.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #74: Alexandra Naughton
Alexandra Naughton is a writer who grew up in Philadelphia but converted to a California girl in 2008. She runs BE ABOUT IT, a small press and reading series and is an active member in Bay Area literary shenanigans. Over the course of some days I talked via Google Docs, and later email, with Naughton about […]
...moreThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #65: Amy Dupcak
I first met Amy Dupcak at The Book Report Network in 2011, where she was an editorial assistant and I, a marketing assistant. We’d shoot off AOL Instant Messages to one another smirking over our computer screens, and leave simultaneously to take lunch. In the summertime, we’d cross Columbus Circle into Central Park where we’d […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Rachel Hall
Rachel Hall discusses her debut collection Heirlooms, her mother’s experience growing up in a French Jewish family during World War II, and crossing genre borders in her writing.
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The Rumpus Interview with Max Ritvo
Max Ritvo passed away on August 23, 2016. Earlier this summer, he spoke with Sarah Blake about his debut collection Four Reincarnations, writing with and about cancer, and how language is a game.
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The Rumpus Interview with Shawn Vestal
Shawn Vestal discusses his new novel Daredevils, Evel Knievel, growing up in a mainstream Mormon family, and what he thinks of the American West.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lynn Steger Strong
Lynn Steger Strong discusses her debut novel Hold Still, the influence of Virginia Woolf, unconditional love, and exit strategies.
...moreWhen Writers Read in Empty Rooms
I wasn’t an adult. I wasn’t accomplished. I sure as hell wasn’t a novelist. I was 11, skinny and afraid, standing in front of my sixth grade class, asking if anyone liked me. Anyone? Anyone at all? Being a debut author is already tough enough, with the emergence from obscurity and the exhausting promotional events […]
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Martin Seay
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Martin Seay about his debut novel The Mirror Thief, the Great Work of alchemy, researching optical prosthetics, and keeping plot lines straight in a 600-page novel.
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The Rumpus Interview with Chanan Tigay
Author Chanan Tigay discusses the complicated man at the heart of The Lost Book of Moses, the anxieties of writing true stories, how much to withhold from your reader—and tells a few jokes about creative nonfiction.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Some people write about dystopian futures, or reimagined folktales, or ghosts, or science fiction. Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of the upcoming story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, does it all. The debut collection, out this month from Black Lawrence Press, weaves Japanese folklore and pop culture into fantastical plots and futuristic […]
...more(Attractive) Debut Novelists Earn Millions
Emma Cline received $2m advance for The Girls, due out in June, which puts her near the top of a growing list of first-time writers with advances in the millions. Last year, City on Fire earned Garth Risk Hallberg a $2m advance. The allure of debut novelists isn’t always an economic issue: Given the amount of […]
...moreThe Debut Poets of 2015
Over at Lit Hub, some of the most notable poetry debuts of this past year talk about what it was like to release their first collections.
...moreThe Book You’re Writing
In the latest installment of Little, Brown’s “Ask a Debut Novelist,” Ted Thompson addresses the anxieties that spring eternal from the minds of new writers, perfectionism and the specter of Zadie Smith’s superior talent among them. While quality is certainly a worthy pursuit in writing, Thompson advocates a simpler and often more fruitful goal: say what […]
...moreHeartlands
Four debut authors—Josh Weil, Skip Horack, Holly Goddard Jones, and Amy Greene—paint varied pictures of the South they know.
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