Grateful Maniacs: A Conversation with Dawn Davies
Dawn Davies discusses her debut memoir, MOTHERS OF SPARTA.
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Posts Tagged: graduate school
Circuitous Journeys: Talking with Sejal Shah
Sejal Shah discusses her debut essay collection, THIS IS ONE WAY TO DANCE.
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Trudging Down Death Road
Reveal yourself. Reveal yourself. You cannot be dead. Reveal yourself.
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How I Lived and Wrote in Las Vegas
Then again, I wonder if the distinct pleasure of Las Vegas lies in the simulacrum.
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Writing That Hurts: On Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
Was I ready to read this book, now? After all this time?
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ENOUGH: What You Wore
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from A Student of History
It was both daunting and thrilling, all the more surreal because it happened in a place I knew.
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From One World to the Next: Talking with Julie Lythcott-Haims
Julie Lythcott-Haims discusses HOW TO RAISE AN ADULT and REAL AMERICAN.
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Heartbreak and Hair Dye: Talking with Amy Feltman
Amy Feltman discusses her debut novel, WILLA & HESPER.
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What Did You Expect, Though?
The immune system, meant to protect a body from foreign invaders, works too assiduously, sees danger where there is none, turns on itself. Such conditions lend themselves to metaphor.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake discusses her new collection, Let’s Not Live on Earth, questions in poems, monsters, and the challenge of writing a dystopia.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #103: Andrew Battershill
Picture the French Surrealists recast as mobsters running a crime ring and you have the premise for Batterhill’s story.
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Transgressive and Unruly Women: Talking with Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen Peterson discusses her new book, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman, her writing process, and academia.
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The Hawk in Me
I continue to adapt. I do all of this because I cannot run away, not really. There is nowhere to go. The hawk is the thing within me.
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A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
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Ghostly Woman
I had never lived in a real haunted house. I didn’t know what any of the rules were. Could her presence cause physical harm?
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #24: Must I Be an Angry April Fool?
When I attended professional acting school back in 1986 (the MFA program at UC Irvine, I proudly remark), I had a teacher ask me once, “Charles, are you able to feel any authentic emotion other than anger?” I paused for a bit and considered the question, before answering, truthfully, “No. I don’t suppose I can.” […]
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A Dyslexic’s Guide to Infinity
In my memory, the Learning Support room is always shadowy. Outside, other girls are forever laughing as they amble past.
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Letter to Jim
Many days I couldn’t see the way forward, but I kept going, the way you had. It was you, after all, who taught me how to stay.
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On Suffering and Sympathy
What is the distance between sympathy and action? How do we travel from one to the other?
...moreThe America We Live in Now
I don’t consider myself a political person. To me, there are no “wrong” political beliefs. I believe that democracy means respecting everyone’s right to her opinion. And if I were forced to declare my own political views, I would have to reluctantly admit that, out of cynicism and self-interest, I find myself increasingly leaning towards […]
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Farewell, Professor Wiesel
Faith is about action, Professor Wiesel said that day. Faith is about what you do with that faith. Belief in God is to do, not to accept. So always the question: what can we do?
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The Rumpus Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang
Esmé Weijun Wang discusses her first novel, The Border of Paradise, about a multi-generational new American family, creative expression through writing and photography, and interracial relationships.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: There Are No Good Muslims
I say I am Catholic because it is easier than telling the truth.
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Out of Order
In summertime, a small group of white, middle-aged, well-educated men were obsessed with my ass.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Jera Brown
I wanted to uncover the nest of wires comprising my gender identity and describe its complicated mass.
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Albums of Our Lives: Scissor Sisters’s Night Work
Night Work is a queer sonic fantasia soaked heavy in the 1980s.
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Albums of Our Lives: Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports
I drifted off and dreamed that Emily and I donned riding hoods and ran through the forest to escape from wolves.
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The Rumpus Interview with Manuel Gonzales
Manuel Gonzales talks about his new novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!, transitioning from nonprofit work to teaching, and how to zig when a trope wants you to zag.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
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