MFA
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My Life with Annie Lennox: Honestly
Oh, Annie, I thought, opening a can of beer. We’re going to be okay. Aren’t we?
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Measuring Emotion
At Lit Hub, a former student talks with Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams, about expressions of emotion in personal essays and why “confession and sentimentality [are] taboo.” For Jamison, the investigation of writing emotion began in her MFA…
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False Dichotomy
Can women really have it all? Like, all of it? But how could they possibly have multiple things at the same time? How can they even think human thoughts after they’ve subsumed their corporeal selves into an all-encompassing prison of…
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The Rumpus Interview With Brenda Miller
Author Brenda Miller discusses the lyric essay, her “poet self” who always bleeds through, and what she’s writing about next.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tania James
Tania James discusses her most recent novel, The Tusk That Did the Damage, the challenges of writing an elephant narrator, and the moment when she knew she could be a writer.
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The Rumpus Interview with Brendan Jones
Brendan Jones talks about his debut novel, The Alaskan Laundry, living in Alaska, his time as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and living and loving what you write.
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Whose Workshop Is It?
Here’s what I mean by not centering the author of the workshop piece: I always tell my students, following the lead of my favorite MFA professor, that the truth is that workshop is most helpful to the person talking, not…
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A Stand-In for New and Difficult Thinking
Clichés are tempting because they do the work of communicating for us. In a manifesto against workshop jargon, Helen Betya Rubinstein warns us of the dangers of sticking to old models: …because you’d have to remember all the way back…
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The Rumpus Interview with Charles Bock
Charles Bock discusses his new novel, Alice & Oliver, the challenges of writing from experience, and how art and life can mirror one another.
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The Rumpus Interview with Miroslav Penkov
Miroslav Penkov discusses his debut novel, Stork Mountain, Balkan history, and the difficulties and rewards of being a bilingual writer.
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The Rumpus Interview with Manuel Gonzales
Manuel Gonzales talks about his new novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!, transitioning from nonprofit work to teaching, and how to zig when a trope wants you to zag.
