Rumpus Exclusive: “Guy in Your MFA: An Origin Story“
A Rumpus exclusive excerpt from Dana Schwartz’s memoir, Choose Your Own Disaster, out today from Grand Central Publishing!
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Posts Tagged: MFA
The Outsider: A Conversation with Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea discusses her forthcoming collection, Against Memoir, out tomorrow from Amethyst Editions/The Feminist Press.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Renee Simms
Renee Simms discusses her debut collection, Meet Behind Mars, leaving law to become a writer, and writing through major life changes.
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Moving Targets
Love twists itself into fear, into statistics, into things people can live with.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #122: Nathan Hill
“Write what you want to write, he said, and let other people deal with taxonomies.”
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The Text Is My Body: A Conversation with Gabrielle Civil
Performance artist and poet Gabrielle Civil discusses her book, Swallow the Fish, how technology has shaped reactions to female nudity, and the importance of risking change.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins discusses This Will Be My Undoing, getting her start on the Internet, and why her collection of linked personal essays isn’t just another Millennial read.
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At the Boundaries of Genre: Talking with Lily Hoang
Lily Hoang discusses her first essay collection, A Bestiary, the importance of genre, and the lessons of teaching.
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TORCH: Movement, Its Depictions, and Two-Way Tickets
The experience of migration lies not in binaries—pleasure-pain and triumph-catastrophe—but rather, like life itself, it resides in the space in between.
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Writing the Truth: A Conversation with David Hicks
David Hicks discusses his debut novel, White Plains, how much truth resides in a work of fiction, and becoming a full-time fiction writer.
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Mothers and Marginalization: Cherise Wolas’s The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
Writing, art, and creation are elevated and pure, the book seems to say, spiritual acts separated from the dross of everyday life.
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Truth and Beauty: Talking with Joshua Wolf Shenk
The new Editor-in-Chief of The Believer dismantles stereotypes of Las Vegas, discusses the magazine’s acquisition, and makes a case for bringing journalism into the academy.
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What Is Being Charted Here?: Talking with Jennifer S. Cheng
Poet and essayist Jennifer S. Cheng discusses her collection House A, working “in the dark,” and the idea of home.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Lisa Factora-Borchers
Lisa Factora-Borchers talks about being a Catholic feminist, writing across genres, and pushing back against a singular narrative about New York.
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Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura
Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Chen Chen
Chen Chen discusses his new collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, playing the game white supremacy has set up, and if God is trying and failing to be a cool dad.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #24: Must I Be an Angry April Fool?
When I attended professional acting school back in 1986 (the MFA program at UC Irvine, I proudly remark), I had a teacher ask me once, “Charles, are you able to feel any authentic emotion other than anger?” I paused for a bit and considered the question, before answering, truthfully, “No. I don’t suppose I can.” […]
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Vincent Toro: Challenging Whiteness and Refusing to Be Colonized
Poet Vincent Toro on his debut collection, Stereo.Island.Mosaic, his writing process, and searching for identity.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #72: Laurie Sheck
Laurie Sheck is the author, most recently, of Island of the Mad, and A Monster’s Notes, a re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry for The Willow Grove, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and at the […]
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Abeer Hoque
Abeer Hoque talks about coming of age in the predominantly white suburbs of Pittsburgh, rewriting her memoir manuscript ten times, and looking for poetry in prose.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Mila Jaroniec
Mila Jaroniec talks about her debut novel Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover,” writing autofiction, the surprising similarity between selling sex toys and selling books, and the impact of having a baby on editing.
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The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Melissa Yancy
Melissa Yancy discusses her debut story collection Dog Years, using her day job for inspiration, and being “an old curmudgeon at heart.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Jerald Walker
Jerald Walker discusses his memoir, The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult, the story of his childhood in The Worldwide Church of God, and how the act of writing delivered him from bitterness.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jennifer Martelli
Jennifer Martelli discusses her debut collection of poetry, The Uncanny Valley, growing up saturated with images of the Madonna, and her experience of motherhood first as a daughter and now as a mother.
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The Rumpus interview with Jeremy P. Bushnell
Jeremy P. Bushnell discusses his new novel, The Insides, themes of consent, and designing a post-apocalyptic board game.
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The Rumpus Interview with Vi Khi Nao
Vi Khi Nao on her new novel Fish in Exile, why women shouldn’t apologize (even when they’re wrong), moving between genres, and why humor is vital in a novel full of darkness and grief.
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The Rumpus Interview with Alice Mattison
Alice Mattison discusses her newest book, The Kite and the String, a meditation on her lifelong journey through the craft of writing, the joys of teaching writing, and the importance of community.
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