Junot Diaz
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The Rumpus Interview with Mia Alvar
Author Mia Alvar discusses her debut short story collection, In the Country, fictional motherhood, literature’s role in society, and the limits of belonging to a place.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Rigoberto González
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Rigoberto González about his new book Our Lady of the Crossword, cover image censorship, and the BP oil disaster.
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Junot Diaz on Overcoming Fear
Eventually the bruises and the rage faded, but not the fear. The fear remained. An awful withering dread that coiled around my bowels — that followed me into my dreams. Author Junot Diaz writes about the first time he got…
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The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
Author Daniel José Older talks about his new novel, Shadowshaper, noir influence in urban fantasy, gentrification, white privilege and the publishing industry, and why we need diverse books, now more than ever.
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Quote Unquote
The benefits of quotation marks may seem obvious, but are there drawbacks? Over at The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark makes the case for leveling the linguistic playing field: One is potentially offensive, controversial, even incendiary; the other is simple reportage.…
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The Rumpus Interview with Skip Horack
Skip Horack talks about his new novel, The Other Joseph, blending research with fiction, and living with the “curse of the fiction writer.”
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Not So Brief and Completely Wondrous
Over at Gawker, Jason Parham leads us to an extremely long and incredibly detailed interview with Junot Diaz: “When as a young person you lose all your bearings, all your reference points, when the gap between where you were and…
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Famous Authors: They’re Just Like Us!
For T Magazine, seven authors reflect on the experience of revisiting and annotating their early works for an upcoming PEN American Center fundraiser. George Saunders thinks his style in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was “manic and abrupt.” Jennifer Egan still…
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Chipping at Wonder Woman
Samuel “Chip” Delany’s penned the landmark 800 page science fiction tri-sexual space novel, any number of short stories set through all corners of the galaxy, and a craft book Junot Diaz calls “a measure of what all criticism and literature…
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His Great Wide World
Ray Bradbury would’ve turned ninety-four this weekend. Dan Piepenbring commemorates his influence at The Paris Review: “Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can…
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Notable NYC: 8/23–8/29
Saturday 8/23: Junot Diaz signs books. La Casa Azul Bookstore, 3 p.m., free. Monday 8/25: Vanessa Manko launches The Invention of Exile with Salman Rushdie, and sponsored by HIP Lit. Manko’s debut novel follows a Russian inventor’s immigration to Connecticut…
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Fine the Way You Are
Homogeneity in the literary scene isn’t a recent development. Earlier this year, Junot Diaz caused a stir by branding the unbearable too-whiteness of his workshop experience. Justin Torres and Ayana Mathis couldn’t help but contribute: “One of the characters is…