When Craft Becomes an Act of Love: An Interview with Gayle Brandeis
I want to be fully present for whatever I’m doing, whether it’s teaching, or writing, or being with people I love.
...more
Posts Tagged: essays
The Correlation Between Love and Essay-Writing: An Interview with Jill Christman
Practicing deep curiosity and close observation is fundamental to writing essays. We need only to look at our small children to teach us these lessons.
...more
The Lucky Ones
I live my life through the twin tenets of curiosity and close observation. I believe imagination and storytelling are central to our survival as a species—and yet, it’s my imagination that makes me jumpy.
...more
RUMPUS BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT BY Sarah Thankam Mathews
An excerpt from The Rumpus Book Club’s August selection, ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT by Sarah Thankam Mathews
...more
From the Archive: Sketch Book Reviews: How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy
An illustrated review of Sumana Roy’s new essay collection, HOW I BECAME A TREE!
...more
Play for Camera
I want to tell her that Hunter is Hunter and Daisy is Daisy and both should be allowed to breathe. I want to tell her I know the instinct to split yourself in half, too, that I know the violence required to hold your true self in shadow, that I have another name I only dare whisper.
...more
The Woman in My Head: A Conversation with Emily Maloney
There’s a lot of rules or feelings about how writing a book should be, but very little of that actually corresponds with reality.
...more
Woven Fibers and Broken Threads: Katherine Agyemaa Agard’s of colour
To be imbricated in hundreds of years of colonial violence is to be entangled in colorist logics and stories of loss and belonging that are rarely linear or singular.
...more
Finding Meaning at the Edge of Reality: Talking with Elissa Washuta
Elissa Washuta discusses her new essay collection, WHITE MAGIC.
...more
Finding Meaning in Where the Why Leads: Talking with Kyle Beachy
Kyle Beachy discusses his new memoir, THE MOST FUN THING.
...more
Writing to Heal: Talking with Emilly Prado
Emilly Prado discusses her debut essay collection, FUNERAL FOR FLACA.
...more
Scrutinizing the Ties That Bind: Melissa Febos’s Girlhood
By the end of the collection, Febos has managed to rewrite or erase entirely many parts of the patriarchal script that held her bound.
...more
The Past Is All We Have: André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis
Is it not in the warm chambers of the past, after all, that we are immortal, invincible, and alive?
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Mariana Oliver and Julia Sanches
Author Mariana Oliver and translator Julia Sanches discuss MIGRATORY BIRDS.
...more
Playing House: A Conversation with Megan Culhane Galbraith
Megan Culhane Galbraith discusses her debut book, THE GUILD OF THE INFANT SAVIOUR.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Gina Nutt
“I like marinating in uncertainty for as long as possible.”
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses her new essay collection, GIRLHOOD.
...more
On Genre and Angle: A Conversation with Julia Koets
Julia Koets discusses her forthcoming poetry collection, PINE.
...more
Language Is the Spell: Kathryn Nuernberger’s The Witch of Eye
A compendium of pungent and poignant biographical narratives of numerous so-called witches, The Witch of Eye is difficult to put down.
...more
Allowing for Breathing Room: A Conversation with Jessica Lind Peterson
Jessica Lind Peterson discusses her debut essay collection, SOUND LIKE TRAPPED THUNDER.
...more
Everything Must Change: A Conversation with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses her new essay collection, GIRLHOOD.
...more
A Thousand Interlinked Details: Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante
With so much to hear in every moment, for Sante, the page is a score, the world a song.
...more
Life Is Odd: A Conversation with Dinty W. Moore
Dinty W. Moore discusses his new essay collection, TO HELL WITH IT.
...more
A Myriad Reckoning: Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature
The collective reimagining in Seismic calls for literary revolution.
...more
Time Is Precious: A Conversation with Clifford Thompson
Clifford Thompson discusses his work and art-making.
...more
The Fluidity of Language and Identity: Melissa Faliveno’s Tomboyland
When was the first time you remember seeing yourself in a book you were reading?
...more
Making It Through: A Conversation with Kelly J. Baker
Kelly J. Baker discusses her new essay collection, FINAL GIRL.
...more
The Complex Disability Representation We Need: Rebekah Taussig’s Sitting Pretty
What Taussig does, then, is ground these ideas in reality through her own lived experiences.
...more
A Chorus of Voices: Talking with Melissa Faliveno
Melissa Faliveno discusses her debut essay collection, TOMBOYLAND.
...more
Justice by Seeing: Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina
But perhaps it is our want for firm ground that Bolina is challenging.
...more