nonfiction
-
The Rumpus Interview with Alysia Abbott
Alysia Abbott discusses craft and love in her new memoir, Fairyland, set in the ’70s and ’80s during the AIDS crisis in San Francisco.
-
Slouching Toward Didion
The Daily Beast takes a look at the history of the female essayist from Didion to Dunham: From cultural critic Susan Sontag and journalist-turned-screenwriter-turned-novelist (and Dunham’s mentor) Nora Ephron, and on through to the host of talented female essayists writing today,…
-
Non-Fiction for the Young
Considering “the booming market for young adult novels,” Alexandra Alter writes for the New York Times about how non-fiction writers are re-working their titles “to make them palatable for younger readers.”
-
A Golden Age for Women Essayist?
On the New York Times, Cheryl Strayed and Benjamin Moser discuss whether this is a golden age for the female essayist. Probably because I’m of the opinion that as long as we still have reason to wedge “women” as a…
-
Women and Non-Fiction
As the author of a forthcoming nonfiction book, a biography, I have become aware of how male-dominated the field of biography is. But why all of nonfiction? That is the hard question Anne Boyd Rioux tries to answer with her…
-
Chomsky For You
Intellectual all-star and modern day renaissance man Noam Chomsky has finally released a “Best Of” anthology, to the elation of liberal arts students nationwide. At The Daily Beast, David Masciotra makes the case for Chomsky’s continuing relevance: Regardless of how one…
-
The Great Nonfiction Escape
But in the grand scheme of things, immersion journalism and other forms of narrative nonfiction, such as memoir, have done more for me as a reader than as a writer, allowing me to vicariously experience things I’d be too much…
-
No Time To Be Neurotic
The Believer has just published what is likely writer Peter Matthiessen’s last interview, conducted only a month before his death. Included: Jaws, the sticker that Kurt Vonnegut left on Matthiessen’s car, and why Matthiessen didn’t like to write about New York: I also…
-
East Egg, West Egg, Deviled Egg
Besotted by over-saturated news feeds, sometimes, you may just want to read vignettes about the more precocious members of the egg family; for this, we have Sadie Stein. Three Stories about Deviled Eggs, over at the Paris Review: Life had changed; suddenly…
-
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Leslie Jamison
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Leslie Jamison about The Empathy Exams, vulnerability, creating hybrid nonfiction, and the benefits of working with an indie press like Graywolf.
-
How Has the Internet Changed Longform Journalism?
Ideally, online longform nonfiction combines the strengths of the print world with those of the Internet, granting writers the rigorous editing and reporting resources they’d get at a magazine but freeing them from the constraints of word limits and limited…
-
A Memoirist’s Pact with the Reader
At Salon, Dani Shapiro writes an open response to a reader who felt that Shapiro’s memoir Slow Motion wasn’t fully honest because it didn’t include all the details of her life. In it, she explains what memoir is and isn’t, and what honesty…