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January Spotlight: Letters in the Mail

For decades my writing was just for me. Then in the nineties, I discovered communities of queer South Asian artists and activists, radical BIPOC writers. . . . This is when I realized being a writer could be a lifestyle rather than my secret passion.

Reading Fiction As an Act of Resistance: A Conversation with Azar Nafisi

We need fiction because fiction does not polarize. Fiction is based on understanding over judgment.

A Hybrid Wonder: Niloufar Talebi’s Self-Portrait in Bloom

Your book is full of glorious limbos.

Wanted/Needed/Loved: Nathan Stocker’s Best Birthday Gift

A truly personal letter is really something different than a song. It’s intended only for the person it’s written to. A song is a way to share that emotional experience with others.

Rumpus Original

The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Pandora and the Naked Dead Woman

Bite that apple, open that jar at your own risk and see how your garden grows, how hopeful you remain. Paradise is, after all, blissful self-ignorance.

I Love(d) Dick, but Not the Show

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to convey the arc of a series of letters in a TV show. Words flash on the screen at regular intervals in bright Helvetica.

Other

Dreaming of Oscar

Katherine you must come to my table. I’ve got Oscar Wilde there. He’s the most marvelous man I ever met. He’s splendid! Over at the Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring…

Other

Portman’s Pen Pals

Apparently, Jonathan Safran Foer wasn’t the only one exchanging emails with Natalie Portman. At The Millions, Jacob Lambert shares excerpts from the supposed epistolary relationship between the actress and no less…

Other

On the Auction Table

The supposedly lost letter from Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac that inspired Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, was found in 2014. Now, the letter is being auctioned off: The 16,000-word…

(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Ames Hawkins

Is it really that human capacity is limited? Or are we limited by what it is we believe we are able, and allow ourselves—are willing—to see?

Other

Charlotte Bronte’s Letters

Laura June writes for Pictorial at Jezebel on the epistolary life of Charlotte Bronte. June covers Bronte’s later years, showing that the significant portion of what we know about Charlotte…

David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Defeat

It never occurred to me to try to write poems without the guidance of other poets and poems.

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Letters in the mail (from authors)

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