first novels
-
The Rumpus Interview with Kea Wilson
Kea Wilson discusses her debut novel We Eat Our Own, the influence of film on her work, and what she’s learned from working as a bookseller.
-
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Pinpricks
Time is king. Believers, agnostics or atheists—humans or not: time rules us. We submit to it, surrender to it, and are shaped by it.
-
The Long and Winding Road
The stories are woven together with my life and my life moved across the globe as I wrote, so the stories too took that long journey. My map of becoming a writer goes all the way around the world. At…
-
The Rumpus Interview with J. Aaron Sanders
J. Aaron Sanders discusses his debut novel, Speakers of the Dead, his writing process, and the wisdom of sharing his early drafts with his students.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Sharon Oard Warner
Sharon Oard Warner discusses her latest book, Sophie’s House of Cards, Breaking Bad, how a sense of place informs fiction, and the Republican war on Planned Parenthood.
-
Debut Novelists and the Books That Shaped Them
Lit Hub asked the seven first-time novelists shortlisted for the 2015 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize what book inspired them to become the authors they are today. Sophie McManus says, I was ten and reading A Wizard of Earthsea…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Elisabeth Egan
Elisabeth Egan discusses her debut novel, A Window Opens, life as a book lover, workplace jargon, and the question we should ask ourselves in place of can we “have it all”.
-
Keep Working, Keep Submitting
Electric Literature’s editor-in-chief Lincoln Michel released his debut collection of stories, Upright Beasts, earlier this year. For the Quivering Pen, Michel explores the challenges first-time authors experience in writing and submitting their work to publishers: It would be nice here…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Sean Bernard
Sean Bernard talks about the placid, annoying heaven of his debut novel, Studies in the Hereafter, why he’s both optimistic and cynical about human nature, and the difference between writing short stories and a novel.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg talks about his debut, City on Fire, living in New York City now and in the ’70s, and the anxiety and gratitude you feel when your first novel generates so much buzz.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Neil Smith
Author Neil Smith discusses his latest book, Boo, the suffering inherent in being thirteen years old, and how friendship can help pull us through traumatic events in our lives.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Ervin
Andrew Ervin discusses his debut novel, Burning Down George Orwell’s House, social media and writing, and how video games can serve as a way to understand the post-human world.