Circuitous Journeys: Talking with Sejal Shah
Sejal Shah discusses her debut essay collection, THIS IS ONE WAY TO DANCE.
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Posts Tagged: Junot Diaz
What to Read When You’re a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize Winner
The 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winners share books that have inspired them!
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ENOUGH: How We See
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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Three Strong Women: Lisa Rosenberg, Maw Shein Win, and Libby Burton
Welcome all three of these books with enthusiasm for what they do, and with shared possibilities for the ”craved world.”
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Finding Atonement in the #MeToo Era
There is no greater act of love than to hold someone accountable for their mistakes.
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The Thread: The Masked Man
What I know and don’t know about men matters. What men know and don’t know about themselves matters more.
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TORCH: Haiti, Crossing Borders of the Mind
The ocean is deep, unfathomably so. And one can stay on the surface or keep on plumbing the depths.
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ENOUGH: On Junot Díaz, from a Survivor
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
...moreThis Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...moreNotable Philadelphia: 4/3–4/9
Literary events and readings in and around Philadelphia this week!
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 3/19–3/25
Literary events and readings in and around L.A. this week!
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #123: Erica Garza
“[T]here was something really empowering about being honest and open about this part of myself. Somehow, writing helped lessen the shame.”
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What Do I Do With My Fear?: A Conversation with Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra discusses her new essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, fear, privilege, and the intersection of politics and everyday life.
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Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Achy Obejas
Achy Obejas discusses her new collection, The Tower of the Antilles, what she’s learned from translating works of others, and why we should all read poetry every day.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses her new book Abandon Me, choosing to be celibate for six months, letting go of our own mythologies, and the sexist reaction women receive when they write nonfiction.
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Interrogating the English Language with Safiya Sinclair
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 2/13–2/19
Monday 2/13: Stephen Kinzer discusses and signs The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire. 7 p.m. at Vroman’s Bookstore. How to Write Romance: A Special Valentine’s Day Panel. Featuring panelists Laurelin Paige, CD Reiss, and Vanessa Fewings. Moderated by Peter Katz. 7:30 p.m. at The Last Bookstore. Tuesday 2/14: […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Chris Santiago
Chris Santigo on his new collection Tula, writing a multilingual text, and the connections between music and writing poetry.
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The Rumpus Interview with Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue discusses her debut novel Behold the Dreamers, teaching herself how to write a novel, and the price of the American Dream.
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The Rumpus Interview with Saleem Haddad
Saleem Haddad discusses his debut novel Guapa, the Orlando shootings, the importance of queer spaces, and Arab literature.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Abigail Ulman
Abigail Ulman talks about her debut collection Hot Little Hands, the limitations of the cultural narrative, her paralyzing pre-publication fears, and why she loves adolescent narrators.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his new collection Insurrections, creating a fictional town, and the pressure to make religious decisions during puberty.
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The Rumpus Interview with Asali Solomon
Asali Solomon discusses her debut novel, Disgruntled, narrative structure, the mythology of memory and place, and returning to Philadelphia after years away.
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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.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Vivian Lee
As an editor of color, one advantage I have is that writers of color are comfortable knowing I’m not asking for edits to artificially enhance or to cover up their race. It’s not weird to me that their characters look like them.
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The Conversation: Angel Nafis, Safia Elhillo, and Elizabeth Acevedo
I don’t think it ever fully sunk in for me that I even live in America.
...moreThe Hardest Thing to Survive
As a kid I was that literal, thinking I lived in fiction, so let me write it. It started there, and it seems it’s going to end there. In a conversation excerpted from Upstairs at the Strand, Junot Diaz and Hilton Als touch deftly on such subjects as masculinity and its relations to queerness; the failure […]
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