memoir
-
The Rumpus Interview with George Hodgman
Editor and author George Hodgman talks about his new memoir, Bettyville, what makes for a good memoir, and returning to his hometown of Paris, Missouri from New York to take care of his aging mother.
-
Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: Liz Prato
Liz Prato talks about her debut story collection, Baby’s on Fire, why she enjoys the process of revision, and what the phrase “literary citizenship” means to her.
-
Growing Up Hemingway
I was trained in basic cocktails by the time I was 6. In two new books, Mariel Hemingway shares her experiences of growing up in a family plagued by mental illness and addiction and how she was able to overcome…
-
Growing Up: The Rumpus Interview with Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea discusses life in recovery, the meaning of family, motherhood, and her new memoir How to Grow Up.
-
Words for Words Without Music
Philip Glass has written a memoir. Philip Glass has written a memoir. The composer Philip Glass has written a memoir. Philip Glass has written a memoir. It begins in Baltimore. The composer Philip Glass has written a memoir. It begins…
-
Honesty, Truth, and the Facts
At Vulture, Rumpus founder Stephen Elliott writes about seeing “himself” on screen in the film adaptation of The Adderall Diaries.
-
The Ickiness of Memoir
…the fact that sincere care is prerequisite illustrates a truth of memoir: some of the things about memoir that appeal to readers, and are inherent to the form, can seem a little bit icky when made explicit. For the Believer…
-
Family Secrets
Memoirist, cartoonist, and creator of the famous Bechdel Test, Alison Bechdel talks to The Millions about the evolution of her art, winning a MacArthur “Genuis Grant,” and searching for answers in her past: I feel like in a way that’s…
-
A Life in Books
Often I wouldn’t be able to keep up, like with Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, but it made it feel like a whole new world of books had been opened up to me, dangerous and menacing and completely appealing to my teenage…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Sarah Manguso
Poet Sarah Manguso discusses her new memoir, Ongoingness, graphomania, and how motherhood does (or doesn’t) change being a writer.
-
How a Writer Became a Carpenter
After producing a “listicle” of the “World’s 100 Unsexiest Men,” Nina McLaughlin decided her writing career hadn’t turned out how she had hoped. So she became a carpenter. NPR has more.
-
An “I” for an “I”
For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy “I,” confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself. Over at the Atlantic, Leslie Jamison argues that personal…