memoir
-
Life and Sex in a Small Town
When I talked to him that weekend, he explained I couldn’t have been pregnant because we hadn’t had sex. He knew because he and his dad sometimes hired a bull and watched it work. He’d had sex himself, in the…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Amy Fusselman
Amy Fusselman discusses her latest memoir/manifesto/philosophical treatise Savage Park, the rise of a new kind of nonfiction, and what kind of art “discombobulates her and makes her scream.”
-
The Rumpus Interview with Mary Karr
Mary Karr talks about her new book The Art of Memoir, the perception of memoir from a “trashy” form, the virtues of poetry, and the complexity of truth-telling.
-
Judging the Judges
This year’s judges of the National Book Award seem to agree that women’s nonfiction writing is abundant and prize-worthy. The 2015 nonfiction longlist includes seven female-authored books, out of 10, the largest percentage of female nominees in the prize’s history.…
-
Mary Karr, Queen of the Memoir, on that “Low-Rent Form”
I stopped putting things in quotation marks because I really wanted the reader to continue to understand or believe or think that he or she was in my head. Listen up as Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry,…
-
Grace Jones Tells Everybody
We’ve been looking forward to Grace Jones’s memoir, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, since it was confirmed early this year, and the quotes leaking on the Internet (via Dazed Digital, among others) haven’t disappointed. As far as we can tell, she eloquently calls…
-
The Last Book I Loved: The Way We Weren’t by Jill Talbot
None of us has telepathy, and even the most empathetic of us can’t really experience the world as another person experiences it. So we read essays and memoirs.
-
Too Excited for Words
Have you heard the good news? Singer-songwriter Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, about her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, is going to be made into a mini-series. The Guardian reported that Smith will co-write the show with John Logan (who created…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Susan Shapiro
Susan Shapiro discusses her latest novel, What’s Never Said, her Instant Gratification Takes Too Long teaching method, and new anti-dating rules between faculty and students at universities such as Harvard and Yale.
-
The Rumpus Interview with Les Standiford
Prolific writer and Director of the FIU Creative Writing Program Les Standiford takes a look back at his career in books, including Water to the Angels and Bringing Adam Home, and tells us what’s next.
-
Words, Music, Words, Music … and Glass
He is one of the only artists … who actually seemed to enjoy his journey, both spiritual and musical. Plus, he seemed to learn something profound with each step of his way, until completely formed as an artist. In a…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Colin D. Halloran
Writer and former US Army infantryman Colin D. Halloran on his new collection, Icarian Flux, how he used experimental narrative to explore his life with PTSD, and why he doesn’t want to be known only as a “war poet.”