Become a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!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
“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
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.
...moreSaturday 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, […]
...moreIt’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
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
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
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
I hate it when men talk about Mary Gaitskill. I call for a permanent moratorium on men gassily discoursing on Mary Gaitskill.
...moreWe’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 […]
...more“If I ever caught you spun, we’d be over. Only one of us gets to be fucked up at a time.”
...moreThis week in New York The Future of Criticism with Lorin Stein and Maud Newton, John D’Agata and Thalia Field discuss the lyric essay, Alice Walker on activism, Salman Rushdie and Lee Bollinger discuss free speech in a globalized world, Mikael Kennedy shows his Polaroids at the Chelsea Hotel and Congress for Curious People symposium […]
...moreThis week in New York Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood holds a reading series, Threepenny Review celebrates its thirtieth birthday, A Public Space throws a launch party for Issue 10, Paris Review holds a Fiction Salon, Meghan O’Rourke reads, Ryan McGinley shows some new photographs of more young naked people and the Guggenheim opens its “Haunted” show […]
...moreThis week in New York Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman talk, Guernica has a reading, Joanna Newsom sings and plays harp, Marcel Dzama appears, talks and signs books, The Moth has a Story Slam, Christopher Walken loses a hand and Zoe Kazan gives him one, and Atlas Obscura presents an international celebration of curious and […]
...moreThis week in New York Ben Marcus and Rivka Galchen at Harper’s Magazine’s The Family Table, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach talk, Mary Gaitskill, John Turturro, and Eric Bogosian at PEN benefit, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary La Danse, Jeff Lewis and the Wowz! at Cakeshop, The Internet as Playground and Factory conference with n+1 magazine, Performa […]
...moreFriday October 16, the New Yorker opened its annual weekend festival of readings, conversations, art tours and musical performances. This is my account of the events I attended, which included among others a talk with Malcolm Gladwell, readings by George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen, a musical performance by Neko Case and a conversation […]
...moreThe New Yorker Festival is fast approaching, and tickets are on sale now. As always, the festival, which runs from October 16-18, promises to bring together the most interesting minds in literature and the arts including Jonathan Franzen, A.M. Homes, Gary Shteyngart, Tilda Swinton, Malcolm Gladwell and many others. Here are some events you don’t […]
...moreI expected to feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose,” but instead I felt lost, grief-stricken. It was a mixture of sadness for the main character and a fear that I might yet ruin my own life—but mostly I wanted to be back in the middle of that book.
...more
In the end, Hunts In Dreams is not a particularly deep book. But it’s rich, strange, comforting and sad all at once.
...more