Posts Tagged: first novels

The Rumpus Interview with Kea Wilson

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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.

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The Rumpus Interview with J. Aaron Sanders

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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.

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The Rumpus Interview with Sharon Oard Warner

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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.

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Debut Novelists and the Books That Shaped Them

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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 by Ursula K. Le Guin when the understanding that I’d make my life with books […]

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The Rumpus Interview with Elisabeth Egan

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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”.

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Keep Working, Keep Submitting

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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 to craft a story of how those first publications inspired me to new heights of […]

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The Rumpus Interview with Sean Bernard

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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.

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The Rumpus Interview with Garth Risk Hallberg

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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.

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The Rumpus Interview with Neil Smith

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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.

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The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Ervin

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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.

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Now, Writing is for Extroverts Too

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When my wife proposed writing a novel together last year, I was initially resistant but not for the most obvious reasons. I wasn’t worried about our ability to work together. I wasn’t even worried about whether we could actually produce a good novel. We had decades of writing experience between us, mostly as reporters for […]

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Guildtalk #1: The Rumpus Interview with Eddie Joyce

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Guildtalk, brought to you by The Rumpus and the Authors Guild, brings attention to exciting new voices in American literature. The first installment features Richard Russo and Eddie Joyce.

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Slow and Steady

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It took Gene Oishi 50 years to write his debut novel, a story about Japanese American identity and family during and after World War II. Over at The Nervous Breakdown, Oishi interviews himself about the process of writing Fox Drum Bebop: I had a lot of excuses, but the reason I didn’t want to write […]

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The Rumpus Interview with Wayne Harrison

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Wayne Harrison discusses his debut novel, The Spark and the Drive, fiction, working as a correctional officer, and Carl Benz’s three-wheeled Motor Car.

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Revelations of a First-time Novelist

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Ted Thompson recently published his debut novel, The Land of Steady Habits. Like many first-time novelists, he had quite a few expectations about what publishing a novel meant. Over at Salon, he discusses how reality diverged from those expectations. For instance, his book sold for $25,000, but even after foreign rights’ sales, he’s not much closer […]

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Not Writing to Write Better

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Julia Fierro has a debut novel Cutting Teeth, but for much of the last decade, the writer was so dispirited by the rejection of her first manuscript that she stopped writing. Instead, she launched Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, a Brooklyn-based writing institution that has helped introduce a generation of successful novelists. Only after years of teaching […]

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