What to Read When You Are Ready to Start Over
Melissa Radke shares a list of books to celebrate her memoir, Eat Cake. Be Brave.
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Posts Tagged: elizabeth gilbert
It’s Just Reality: Talking with Meaghan O’Connell
Meaghan O’Connell discusses her new memoir, And Now We Have Everything, perfectionism in motherhood and writing, and being pregnant again.
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The Rumpus Interview with Blair Braverman
Blair Braverman discusses her latest book, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North, gendered travel narratives, and the pressure to write about personal trauma.
...moreKaraoke for a Cause
The New York Times writes about how Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, overcame her fear of singing in public to raise money for a nonprofit that helps orphans in Nepal. Gilbert recalls: I said to myself, “You’re not allowed to [be afraid] anymore. You spend your life telling people they have to take […]
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Podcatcher #2: Rose Buddies
Rachel and Griffin McElroy, hosts of The Bachelor fancast Rose Buddies, talk about about the problematic aspects of the show, how they stay hydrated, and what’s up with all those McElroy podcasts.
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Female Friendships and Online Literary Sexism
As an essayist who often writes from personal experience and who’s working on a memoir, I believe deeply it is a feminist act for women to tell their stories.
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The Rumpus Interview with Yumi Sakugawa
Yumi Sakugawa discusses her latest book, Ikebana, discovering meditation, exploring blank spaces, and drawing a world of sentient oranges and one-eyed monsters.
...moreTravel Writer’s Burden
In a thoughtful essay for Boston Review, Jessa Crispin reflects on the gender dynamics of travel writing, and the genre’s penchant for a colonial mentality that persists in today’s narratives: Any travel writer who deviates from gender-defined roles risks being overlooked. And that is a shame because we do not need men to explain the […]
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Good Riddance to the Goodbye-to-New-York Essay
Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” has spawned a new literary genre: the personal screed about loving (or leaving) New York City.
...moreThe Great G.A.N.
Does the “Great American Novel” actually exist—or is it just the name of a book by Philip Roth? Over at the New Yorker, you can read Adam Gopnik’s review of The Dream of the Great American Novel by Laurence Buell, and you can also listen to Elizabeth Gilbert, Adam Gopnik and Sasha Weiss discuss what the term has evolved […]
...moreTournament of Books X Begins!
Get ready for the Morning News’s tenth annual Tournament of Books, a “March Madness–style battle royale” to determine which work of fiction will reign supreme (though the site is careful to note that the competition “is not an attempt to formalize the best 17 books of 2013”). Some of this year’s finalists include The Signature of […]
...moreNotable Chicago 10/27–11/2
Sunday 10/27: Every week, you’re invited to join poets and spectators alike for the Uptown Poetry Slam. This is where slam poetry began and where it continues to grow. 7 PM, $6, The Green Mill. Monday 10/28: If you’ve been working on a piece to be read aloud, may I suggest stopping by Do Not […]
...more“I Might Really Geek Out Here, Dude”
In 2005, Elizabeth Gilbert was a mid-list author with some fiction and some journalism under her belt. In 2006, she tried something new and published a memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. The rest is history and Oprah Book Club sales. Now she’s returned to her roots with a novel, The Signature of All Things, and our very own Steve […]
...moreMcSweeney’s Saves Thanksgiving
Already overwhelmed by thoughts of Thanksgiving? Want a menu that teeters on the line of conventional and culturally innovative? Look no further than McSweeney’s Thanksgiving Gallimaufry! The online booklet features recipes from their cookbooks, At Home on the Range by novelist and Rumpus contributor Elizabeth Gilbert and Margret Yardley Potter, Mission Street Food and the […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert
This is how I think of it: there’s a contract between you and the mystery. And the mystery is the thing that brings life to the work.
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The Finest Wife
When Rose was sixteen years old and five months pregnant, she won a beauty pageant in South Texas, based on her fine walk up a runway in a sweet navy-blue bathing suit. This was shortly before the war. She had been a skinny, knee-scratching kid only the summer earlier, but her pregnancy had just delivered her this sudden prize of a body.
...moreJessica Freeman-Slade: The Last Book I Loved, The Last American Man
It’s easy to write off one author based on a best-seller. Call it jealousy, call it high-end literary disdain, call it whatever you want, but it’s easy to give in to the impulse to distrust something once it’s become popular. This indeed was my reaction to the author Elizabeth Gilbert, who I (as many others) […]
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