A Séance of a Book: Talking with Allie Rowbottom
Allie Rowbottom discusses her debut memoir, JELL-O GIRLS.
...more
Posts Tagged: mary gaitskill
Notable NYC: 7/21–7/27
Literary events in and around New York City this week!
...more
Thrown Off Balance: Talking with Malinda McCollum
Malinda McCollum discusses her debut story collection, THE SURPRISING PLACE.
...more
Notable NYC: 5/19–5/25
Literary events and readings in and around New York City this week!
...more
(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Emily Smith
A writer must push her pleasure into risk, expose herself publicly to strangers with no knowledge of how she might be received, and become something that must be seen.
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 4/16–4/22
Literary events and readings in and around L.A. this week!
...more
The Delusion of Objectivity: Talking with Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison discusses The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, understanding that every text is incomplete, and whether motherhood has changed her writing.
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 3/5–3/11
Literary events and reading in and around L.A. this week!
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Terese Mailhot
Terese Mailhot discusses her debut memoir, Heart Berries, writing candidly about one’s personal life, and the good that can come from anger.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna discusses New People, inhabiting her characters without judging them, playing with the reality and surreality of identity, and pushing against traditional story arcs.
...moreNotable NYC: 4/8–4/14
Saturday 4/8: Chris Hayes presents A Colony in a Nation in conversation with Wesley Lowery. St. Joseph’s College, 6 p.m, $30. Claudia Rankine and Garnette Cadogan give the keynote address at the Focus Festival running on Saturday and Sunday. Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 7 p.m., $20. Julia Loktev and Sukhdev Sandhu join the Segue series. Zinc […]
...moreNotable NYC: 3/11–3/17
Saturday 3/11: Carolyn Hembree, Neil Shepard, and Terese Svoboda read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7 p.m., free. Chris Tysh and Cole Swensen join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 3/12: Joshua Mohr discusses his memoir Sirens with Charles Bock. McNally Jackson Books, 7 p.m., free.
...moreNotable NYC: 2/18–2/24
Saturday 2/18: Ryan Dobran and Wendy Letterman join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Kristen Gallagher and Ed Steck celebrate new books from Skeleton Man Press. The Glove, 6 p.m., free. Sunday 2/19: Elizabeth Hall and Melissa Buzzeo read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 6:30 p.m., free. Monday 2/20: Not My President’s Day march. Columbus […]
...moreProfiling the Princess of Darkness
The four books Gaitskill produced over the next two decades, all of them rife with sexual violence and self-destruction, cemented her reputation as the “Princess of Darkness”—as did her much-discussed past. Gaitskill, who was born in Kentucky and raised in Michigan, ran away as a teenager, was briefly institutionalized, worked as a stripper and call […]
...moreThe Universal Truth of the Body
At Guernica, Jennifer Sears talks to Mary Gaitskill about her recent novel, The Mare, emotional accessibility, love that crosses social norms, and the challenges—technical and empathic—of developing a characters very different from herself. Gaitksill credits the body, her own, for both truth and compulsion: My head will talk to itself all day and all night […]
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Paul Lisicky
The Rumpus Book Club talks with Paul Lisicky about his new book The Narrow Door>/em>, how much of your story you own, and the importance of reading your own work aloud.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
...moreGaitskill on Tolstoy
Mary Gaitskill wrote for the Atlantic on Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina and the complexities of personality: Everyone says Anna Karenina is about individual desire going against society, but I actually think the opposite is stronger: the way societal forces limit the expression of the individual.
...moreMary Gaitskill Procrastinates Too
For The Millions, Chelsea Voulgares talks to Mary Gaitskill about her new novel The Mare and how to establish productive writing habits: I’m not consistent like some people seem to be. Sometimes I don’t write at all. If I’m not really working on anything, I might go for quite a while without writing. I’ve never kept a record […]
...moreNotable NYC: 10/31–11/6
Saturday 10/31: Sandra Simonds and Meld Nichols join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Monday 11/2: Angela Lockhart-Aronoff, Jaime Shearn Coan, Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, Morgan Parker, and Jon Sands join the Writing Aloud Reading Series. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Marc Matter and Sound Poetry Magazine discuss Henri Chopin’s editorial project Revue OU/Cinquième Saison. Wendy’s Subway, […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Growing Up Gaming
“Is this inclusive or exclusive?” he asked with a creased brow. “I don’t like the idea that we’re being treated as a joke.”
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Megan Kruse
Author Megan Kruse talks about her debut novel, Call Me Home, queer characters in rural places, sibling relationships, and how the music of Lucinda Williams inspires her.
...moreNotable NYC: 11/1–11/7
Saturday 11/1: Adam Fitzgerald, Dara Wier, Sarah Rose Nordgren, and Bridget Talone read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7 p.m., free. Mark Cugini, Iris Cushing, Dorothea Lasky, and Sam Wilder join the Banquet Reading Series. Greenpoint Heights, 8 p.m., free. Sunday 11/2: Cynthia Cruz launches her new collection of poems Wunderkammer with Ken Chen, Marni Ludwig, […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
It’s that time of year where we’re all craving a good scary story, be it told by candle light, on a screen, or in a book. Neil Gaiman’s middle-reader graphic novel Hansel and Gretel came out on Tuesday of this week, and he recently spoke to TOON Books editor Françoise Mouly and Art Speigelman about […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Porochista Khakpour
Writer Porochista Khakpour discusses her new novel, The Last Illusion, her desire to literalize the surreal, the role addiction plays for her characters and narrative, and being a lover of outsider stories.
...more
Open Letter from Mary Gaitskill
I hesitated to write this letter in response to Suzanne Rivecca’s essay “What Men Talk About When They Talk About Mary Gaitskill,” because I hate to appear ungrateful for Rivecca’s passionate wish to have my back.
...more
“Life’s Not Like That for Others?”
For Tablet, Batya Ungar-Sargon profiles Tama Janowitz, who took the literary world by storm in the ’80s, then faded from view while contemporaries like Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis achieved more lasting success. Janowitz, whose “sentences sparkle, rife with stunning visuals and cutting observations,” comes off as delightfully caustic, weathering the difficulties of her […]
...more
What Men Talk About When They Talk About Mary Gaitskill
I hate it when men talk about Mary Gaitskill. I call for a permanent moratorium on men gassily discoursing on Mary Gaitskill.
...more“The Devil’s Treasure”
We’ve written about Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading with excitement before, and this week is no exception. The latest issue features new writing from Mary Gaitskill: an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, titled “The Devil’s Treasure.” We won’t spoil any of it here, but let’s just say it feels good to read Gaitskill’s work again. The excerpt is […]
...moreLittle Green
“If I ever caught you spun, we’d be over. Only one of us gets to be fucked up at a time.”
...more