journals
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The Present in Its Most Vivid Colors: A Conversation with Ben Shattuck
What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #133: Jake Shears
“I wrote this book. I worked really, really hard on it, and I was a little scared by it.”
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No Pressure: Bieber, Blackness, the Cult of Perfection
Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.
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The Rumpus Interview with Stacy Szymaszek
Poet Stacy Szymaszek discusses her most recent collection, Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals, the “notebook genre,” and claiming a city—ugly sites and all.
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February 25th, 1956
… met, by the way, a brilliant ex-Cambridge poet at the wild St. Botolph’s Review party last week; will probably never see him again… but wrote my best poem about him afterwards—the only man I’ve met yet here who’d be…
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Do Reading Fees Exploit Writers?
In recent years, many reputable publications have taken to charging reading fees and earlier this year, Nick Mamatas set off an Internet kerfuffle over The Offing‘s reading fee policies. The ethical quandary surrounding reading fees persist—not only are reading fees obstacles…
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Sylvia Plath’s First Tragedy
I don’t know whether it is a hereditary characteristic, but our little family is altogether too prone to lie awake at nights hating ourselves for stupidities—technical or verbal or whatever—and to let careless, cruel remarks fester until they blossom in…
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Writing the Story of Your Life
Keeping a diary requires strong commitment and great honesty, and Zadie Smith has struggled with the idea of journaling all through her life, as she writes in her latest essay, “Life Writing,” over at Rookie.
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Almost On The Road
The New Yorker has unlocked a selection of Jack Kerouac’s journals that ran in the magazine back in 1998. Beginning with his near-completion of Town and City, and ending days after its publication, the text captures the growing pains of…
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When The Private Becomes The Professional
“Will social media kill writers’ diaries?” So asks Rumpus contributor Michele Filgate, in a Salon piece that examines the growing usage of Twitter, Facebook, and other public outlets to allow readers to eavesdrop on the personal thoughts and process of being…
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Exploring the Redwood Forest: Journals and the Private Self
Lately, over crumb-laden dinner tables and cups of coffee and on windy hillsides I ask friends, family, and peripheral acquaintances whether or not they write in a journal.
