The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Alexis Ivy
“Writing in this way allows me to put order in this disordered world.”
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Join NOW!“Writing in this way allows me to put order in this disordered world.”
...moreThe marijuana shop shimmers from the abyss, a glowing green jewelry box atop the hill.
...moreIt felt like the sun beating down on closed eyelids.
...more“Healing is a process you must actively engage in.”
...moreI think this is what love is, critical and enduring.
...moreI didn’t feel bad about lying because the truth would have hurt her.
...moreShe never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
...moreThe last time I punked the muse, I wrote of the summer solstice, a meditation into the heart of the sun. My goal was to leave behind the ever-more-depressing news cycle, and touch some place deep down where hope resides. We live in the Sun, I concluded. I envisioned a home where we could all […]
...moreFive months after my dad’s eviction, in the warehouse, I looked through cardboard boxes, stacked on top of one another like a game of Jenga.
...moreJ.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from.
...moreLee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
...moreWe had to ask everyone. Not just the people who looked “good” to get money from. And that was great because of course I was surprised by who responded and who didn’t. I feel, in general, in my life at this moment, I’m very aware of how off my preconceptions are, whereas I’ve always thought […]
...moreIn her voice, I am held, cradled even. I am equal parts longing and hope. I am home.
...moreAt the Guardian, Tim Cooke investigates why writers’ experiences with homelessness and destitution fascinates readers: So what is the attraction of being down and out? For some, the prospect of real, hard-hitting subject matter has proved irresistible, while for others the route to the streets has been paved with anguish. Historically, those who have deliberately flung […]
...moreBoston-based literary magazine The Pilgrim was founded by journalist James Parker with the aim to bring the unheard voices of the homeless community to print while encouraging, teaching, and healing through the act of writing. At the Boston Globe, Zachary Jason takes us inside a meeting of the Black Seed Writers Group as they create the 39th […]
...moreOver at Lit Hub, Michele Filgate reports on the growing influence of Street Lit, which provides writing workshops and books to the homeless community in Austin, Texas. Filgate also talks with Street Lit founder Barry Maxwell, as he opens up about the “relief” reading offered him while he was homeless: Reading was such a zone of psychological relief, and […]
...moreI’m thinking about the difference between “I stay somewhere” and “I live somewhere.”
...moreAnd that is how I feel about John Irving novels. That they gave me everything.
...moreMot was living my own fear… I wanted to learn from him how I might survive, if I too ended up without a home, without the resources to live what I thought of as a minimally decent life.
...moreAuthor Christopher Bollen talks about his sophomore novel, Orient, secrets and privacy, sexual orientation in fiction, and the lost art of the whodunit mystery.
...moreWe open in a wide framing shot of autumn-tinged trees lining a schoolyard. A procession of first-graders walk-run-skip down the sidewalk circling the school.
...moreThe Niemyers’s experiment is part family adventure, part exercise in extreme minimalism, and part matter of convenience.
...morePoet and musician Chris Stroffolino talks about his new album Griffith Park, recording with the Silver Jews, and life inside his piano van.
...moreEverything I have, aside from what I’m wearing, is in a light brown vinyl purse with two outside pockets. I hold the purse close at all times, and I sleep with it under my head like a rigid, desperate pillow.
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