The Rumpus Interview with Susan Barker
Susan Barker discusses her third novel, The Incarnations, writing dialogue in a second language, the Opium Wars and Chinese history, and the years of research that went into her book.
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Posts Tagged: historical fiction
Writing Through History
Ottessa Moshfegh views the past as a sort of fiction—she didn’t live it, so in a way, it is fiction to her. This view informs both her novels, which are full of deeply flawed characters and rich details. But writing Eileen, set in 1960s New England, was fraught for the author: I had to deal […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Shawver
Author Brian Shawver talks about his new book, Danger on the Page, his novel Aftermath, MFA programs, and why it’s a good thing that writing never stops being hard work.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Steve Stern
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Steve Stern about his new novel The Pinch, about what it means for Jews to be “people of the book,” and how fiction and history can be entwined in entertaining and challenging ways.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr and Janis Cooke Newman
Authors Joshua Mohr and Janis Cooke Newman talk with one another about their new novels, All This Life and A Master Plan for Rescue, respectively.
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The Rumpus Interview with Kate Walbert
Author Kate Walbert talks about her new novel, The Sunken Cathedral, about the way cities change over time, and her approach to using footnotes in fiction.
...moreRemembering Forgotten Women
I think there’s a lot of dissonance for women, where there’s how we want to live, and how we want to see ourselves, and then what our real circumstances are. And I think the more we can close that distance between who we want to be and who we really are—the happier we are. NPR […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Damien Ober
Damien Ober discusses the Declaration of Independence, Internet viruses in the eighteenth century, and his new novel Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America.
...moreWhen in Rome
Dig historical fiction? In the forthcoming issue of The New York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn revisits Augustus, the last novel written by John Williams, author of the literary cult favorite, Stoner. “Like the best works of historical fiction about the classical world,” Mendelsohn writes, “Augustus suggests the past without presuming to create it.” Originally published […]
...moreShakespeare’s Plays: Fact or Fiction?
Has Shakespeare become so intertwined with our culture that we find it hard to separate myth from reality? Dan Jones at the Telegraph writes about how many of Shakespeare’s historical portraits are tinged with his own biases and those of his sources. Discussing plays such as Henry VI and Richard II, Jones reminds readers that […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
At HTMLGIANT, brilliant craft advice from a cartoon! “If you’re not popular, and you write a good poem, nobody gives a shit.” The Guardian goes off on Martin Amis, complaining of “the continued endurance of a surprising tolerance for misogyny from vaunted men of letters who came of age as writers in an era when the […]
...moreResearch for Storytellers
Two recent novels bend history to the will of their authors.
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