george saunders
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Up Next in the Rumpus Book Clubs
There’s still time to get the December selections if you join either (or both!) the Rumpus Book and Poetry Book Clubs. What makes our book clubs special? Well, our first readers have a terrific track record of selecting truly amazing…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Story|Houston published a beautiful story this week in their Fall 2014 issue, all of which centers around the theme of family, functional or otherwise. “Termites” tells the story of Tamara, aka Tam or Tam-Tam, a youngish woman living in and…
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Famous Authors: They’re Just Like Us!
For T Magazine, seven authors reflect on the experience of revisiting and annotating their early works for an upcoming PEN American Center fundraiser. George Saunders thinks his style in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was “manic and abrupt.” Jennifer Egan still…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Every good story is rooted in conflict, and most of us learned the different types of conflict in our high school literature classes like clockwork, year in and year out: man v. man, man v. self, man v. society, man…
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Talking Funny
There aren’t many things that make sense, nakedly, without justification or explanation or exposition. But George Saunders reading Barry Hannah and Grace Paley does. For the New Yorker‘s Page Turner, he leafs through Paley’s “Love,” Hannah’s “The Wretched Seventies,” and…
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Short Stories for Aliens
Do aliens, once in love, ever break up? You’d have to hope so. It would be kind of creepy, all these aliens living monogamously to like age 9,000, making love in that slow, telepathic way they have. And afterward, they…
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The Funny Side of Writing
Over at the New Yorker, read an excerpt from Mike Sacks’s upcoming Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers. The selection features an interview with George Saunders, in which the writer talks about his upbringing, getting inspiration for…
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Burrito with a Side of Stories
Chipotle is getting into the publishing business. Vanity Fair reports that the burrito chain’s cups and bags will feature very short stories from authors like Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, and others. Shortly after the announcement, Slate published…
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The Girl with the Hair in Her Mouth
“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness: those moments when another human being was there in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly,” George Saunders said in his 2013 commencement address at Syracuse.…
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Notable NYC: 4/19–4/25
Saturday 4/19: Chris Sylvester, Holly Melgard, Joey Yearous-Algozin, Jordan Dunn, and Eddie Hopely read at part three of the Brooklyn Poetry Summit. BookThugNation, 7:30 p.m., free. David Abel, Anna Vitale, Dana Ward, and Suzanne Stein close out the Brooklyn Poetry…
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Notable NYC: 4/12–4/18
Saturday 4/12: Michael Parker and Ethan Hauser celebrate their new books with a reading, musical DJ Jim McHugh, and literary mingle. Wythe Hotel, 6 p.m., free. Sunday 4/13: David Gerrard, Douglas Watson, and Jason Porter join the Sunday Night Fiction…
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Notable SF: 1/13–1/19
Monday 1/13: New York City’s Boog City Goes West 2014 featuring readings from Amy Berkowitz, Brandon Brown, Donna de la Perrière, Ivy Johnson, David Kirschenbaum, Joseph Lease, and Jill Stengel. Free, 6 p.m. at Alley Cat Gallery. Tuesday 1/14: The Booksmith…