MFA
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
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The Rumpus Interview with Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg talks about his debut, City on Fire, living in New York City now and in the ’70s, and the anxiety and gratitude you feel when your first novel generates so much buzz.
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Eat Your Peas
Having some novelist (or poet or playwright) assert an individual consciousness—in and of itself— is a profoundly threatening act if you’re a dictator.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Karrie Higgins
The more narratives that approach reality “differently” get treated as “insane” or “unreal,” the less readers are exposed to them, and the more “unreal” or “insane” they seem. It’s like a feedback loop.
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A Hopeful Construct
If writing can’t be taught, why do we spend so much time talking about it? Jayne Anne Phillips chimes in on the MFA debate: Life does not ‘tenure’ anyone. In that sense, it was all a hopeful construct.
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The Rumpus Interview with David Lipsky
David Lipsky, whose book was recently adapted into the movie The End of the Tour, discusses his career as a writer and journalist as it’s evolved in the twenty years since his road trip with David Foster Wallace.
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Writing Better Diverse Books
But between publishers’, readers’ (audiences!), editors’, writers’—and, it turns out, MFA students’—definitions, the term “immigrant fiction” has become a muddle, a catchall phrase to describe anything that appears “non-American,” foreign in some way. Bix Gabriel writes for Guernica on what…
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High-Priced Higher Education
Another school year has begun leading to age old questions like: is this degree worth it? The New Yorker takes a look at college degrees and how over the last century, the liberal arts degree that once served as a…
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The Awesome and Baffling Immateriality of Time
Over at BOMB Magazine, the brilliant Laura van den Berg has an illuminating conversation with the talented Stephanie Barber, artist-in-residence in the MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Stephanie says: Time — and how to organize it,…
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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.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Juliana Spahr
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Juliana Spahr about her new book That Winter the Wolf Came, the oil industry, and writing about “difficult” topics.
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The Rumpus Interview with Isaac Oliver
Isaac Oliver, author of Intimacy Idiot, talks to us about Grindr, OkCupid, different forms of intimacy, and being single in NYC.