first novels
-
Creating a Contrary Character
I think she’s half pursuing these conventions of romantic love, and half rejecting them. Which produces this kind of contrariness. There’s this line in the first chapter where she says, “I only want what I hate.” These contradictions of desire…
-
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Iromuanya
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Julie Iromuanya about her new book Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, writing an unlikeable main character, and worrying about your parents reading your finished book.
-
Now, Writing is for Extroverts Too
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…
-
Guildtalk #1: The Rumpus Interview with Eddie Joyce
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.
-
The Second Time Around
2014 wasn’t just the year of the debut—plenty of authors released their second novel, often considered the most challenging for writers to write. Slate sat down with some second-time novelists to discuss their sophomore efforts, like Family Life author Akhil…
-
Slow and Steady
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…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Wayne Harrison
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.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Will Chancellor
Debut novelist Will Chancellor talks about successful satire, destroying drafts of A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall to get to the finished version, and the advantages of fiction over competing media.
-
Novels Are a Long Time Coming
Contrary to the mission of National Novel Writing Month, most novels take far longer to complete, as stay-at-home dad Ryan McSwain learned when he set out to write his first novel, Monsters All the Way Down. The book, due out…
-
A Family Affair
I always think of you as a more novelistic novelist than I am. I’m not predisposed to like poetry. I’m not the kind of person who thinks of poetry as charming or who says of something, “it’s like poetry,” as…
-
I Am Not My Protagonist
At Buzzfeed Books, novelist Catherine Lacey writes about an interview she had with a reporter who assumed Lacey had based the protagonist of her first novel on herself. To an extent, Lacey finds this frustrating, but then she considers the…
-
Revelations of a First-time Novelist
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,…