A Lumpy, Misshapen Book: Talking with Elissa Washuta
Elissa Washuta discusses her chapbook, STARVATION MODE.
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Posts Tagged: nonfiction
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #131: Lisa Wells
“I always feel like I’m starting over. I don’t know how I ever wrote a poem. I really do have that feeling.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #121: CLS Ferguson
“Because that’s how memories are, right? Little flashes.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #116: David Lazar
“Becoming an essayist has always seemed to me as a bit of a pratfall.”
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Slowly Converging Paths: A Conversation with Nate Blakeslee
Nate Blakeslee discusses American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West, cultivating trust in his sources, and recreating action-packed scenes he did not witness.
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Reinventing Motherhood and Re-Dreaming Reality: Talking with Ariel Gore
Ariel Gore discusses her new novel We Were Witches, why capitalism and the banking system are the real enemies, and finding the limits between memoir and fiction.
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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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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #90: Erika Carter
Erika Carter’s debut novel Lucky You tells the story of three young women in their early twenties who leave their waitressing jobs in an Arkansas college town to embark on a year off grid in the Ozark Mountains. In a remote house, without a washing machine or cell phone reception, Ellie, Chloe, and Rachel grapple […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Amy Benson
Our American obsession with the personal and individual has made us the tremendous resource consumers we are in the world.
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Down the Rabbit Hole of Experimental Fiction: Michael J. Seidlinger on Becoming a Reader
Michael J. Seidlinger discusses returning to House of Leaves for Ig Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses her new book Abandon Me, choosing to be celibate for six months, letting go of our own mythologies, and the sexist reaction women receive when they write nonfiction.
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with George Saunders
George Saunders discusses his new (and first) novel Lincoln in the Bardo, Donald Trump, and a comprehensive theory of literature.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Angela Palm
Putting experience into words gives them less power over me, I think.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Ben Tanzer
Ben Tanzer discusses his new essay collection Be Cool, why running is so important to him, and not being precious about his work.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jon Day
Jon Day discusses his memoir, Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier, the bicycle as a symbol of gentrification, and the city as “a technology for living.”
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Larissa MacFarquhar
Larissa MacFarquhar discusses her book Strangers Drowning, why she finds nonfiction so compelling, and how she gets inside the minds of her subjects.
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau discusses her essay, “Know Your Rights!” from the collection, The Fire This Time, what she loves about motherhood, and why it’s time for White America to get uncomfortable.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Kerry and Tyler Cohen
Sisters and collaborators Kerry and Tyler Cohen talk about their new book Girl Trouble: An Illustrated Memoir, female friendships, and some of the challenges of writing memoir.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #63: Patrick Madden
Patrick Madden teaches writing at Brigham Young University and is the author of the essay collection Quotidiana. His essays frequently appear in literary magazines and have been featured in The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. He pays close attention to the details of the every day, infusing humor and self-deprecation, combining […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Terry McDonell
Terry McDonell talks about his new memoir The Accidental Life and his career in the magazine business, which spans the beginning of New Journalism through the digital revolution.
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The Rumpus Interview with Belle Boggs
Belle Boggs discusses The Art of Waiting about navigating through the difficulties of conception and fertility treatment.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Jane Alison
Jane Alison discusses her autobiographical novel, Nine Island, the value of truth in fiction, and unsubscribing from romantic love.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Fairy Tales, Trauma, Writing into Dissociation
Our bodies are incredible and intelligent things.
...moreA Box Of Chocolates
I think that every novelist of the kind of novels that I write has in them maybe one really good book… but the trouble with so many novelists is that they keep on writing novels even when they run out of ideas. Winston Groom, author of the novel Forest Gump, wrote solely nonfiction for almost two […]
...moreThe Power of Unreality
While fiction embraces the flights of fancy that come with imagination, nonfiction is fairly hostile to writers who stray too far away from the objective facts of the story. How closely should writers of nonfiction stick to facts? At Electric Literature, Justin Lawrence Daugherty makes the case for embracing some unreality in writing nonfiction: We can […]
...moreA Romance with Concision
Can’t wait for Sarah Manguso’s newest book, 300 Arguments? Over at Harper’s Magazine, you can read an essay excerpted from the book about brevity and aphorisms. Manguso writes: Please don’t try to convince me that my romance with concision follows from the way we experience reality now, in interrupted and interruptive increments; or that if […]
...moreTo Make Good Art from Bad Things
Gay Talese’s new book The Voyeur’s Motel has garnered some well-earned bad press after its source was discredited. But was it any good? For The New Republic, Alexandra Molotkow argues that to be worth reading, Talese would have had to offer some measure of reflection: Journalistic ethics are less important than ethics.
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