The Mentor Series: Emily J. Smith and Chloe Caldwell
Emily J. Smith interviews her mentor, Chloe Caldwell.
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Posts Tagged: personal essay
Larger Than Life: Talking with Alia Volz
Alia Volz discusses her debut memoir, HOME BAKED.
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Finding Hope in Resistance: Talking with Amy Roost
Co-editor Amy Roost discusses the anthology FURY: WOMEN’S LIVED EXPERIENCES DURING THE TRUMP ERA.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #205: Beth Alvarado
“For me, when I write nonfiction, my mind moves from the outside to the inside.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #200: Amplify
“Being misunderstood is a really terrible feeling.”
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Trisha Low
Trisha Low discusses her new book-length essay, SOCIALIST REALISM.
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Being in the Room: Talking with Kendra Allen
Kendra Allen discusses her debut essay collection, WHEN YOU LEARN THE ALPHABET.
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The Thread: Down Girl
Misogyny reminds us of our place: down girl.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Esmé Weijun Wang
Esmé Weijun Wang discusses THE COLLECTED SCHIZOPHRENIAS.
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People You May Know
Staring at that profile picture, I couldn’t not click.
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Blood from a Door Nail: Talking with Susan Shapiro
Susan Shapiro discusses her forthcoming book THE BYLINE BIBLE.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Emily Smith
A writer must push her pleasure into risk, expose herself publicly to strangers with no knowledge of how she might be received, and become something that must be seen.
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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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Allowing a Female to Own Her Genius: Talking with Alana Massey
Alana Massey discusses her debut collection, All the Lives I Want, the best piece of writing advice she’s ever received, and acknowledging the work that women do.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Night
With these young women, I no longer slip in and out of places undetected. With them, my cloak of invisibility—my only known superpower—has been removed.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Pain Scale Treaties
Perched on the shoulders of generational trauma sit these two theses: suffering begets cruelty begets suffering begets cruelty, and pain is empathy’s catalyst.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Self-Portrait with Parts Missing and/or Smeared
A first day means there was a never-day.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: 69 Love Songs
Everywhere people are shoving things into the ground—time capsules not to be opened until the year 2100, the more optimistic postmarked for 3000—letters to the future in the language of the now.
...moreThe Hell of Personal Writing
When I give lectures to writing students I tell them to not get discouraged if they do not enjoy writing. “I hate writing,” I say, “It’s horrible. It’s hell.” They are shocked every time, but I mean it. I often finish essays feeling like I’ve had to cut away a part of myself in the […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: DNA
Of course, maybe dividing the world into two kinds of people is just another way of making sure there is a crack in everything. When can you smooth out this fault line?
...moreA Home of One’s Own
Jami Attenberg wrote a personal essay in Lenny Letter about finding home in unexpected places: I found myself uttering these words: “If I lived here, I would never want to leave.” No one was more surprised than me when I said it; they rose up from somewhere new in me. I didn’t even know that […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Kill Shot
1964, a month prior to the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a different home movie shot. Infant toss. Up-down. Plummeting. I’m ten months of age—picking up speed.
...moreMeasuring 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 program: “I hated this sort of smug assumption that we all knew what was bad.” […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Used to Be Schwartz
When I told my friend Aharon that my family name used to be Schwartz, he said, “Used to be Schwartz—sounds like a Borscht Belt act.”
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: A Brief History of a Bad Heart
She studies you, still panting with an energy that consumes the room, and whispers in a reedy voice: “They say you fucked up your heart.”
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Thoughts on My Ancestry.com DNA Results
There were chains. History books always describe the chains.
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The Rumpus Interview with Meghan Daum and Elliott Holt
Meghan Daum, the anthology’s editor, and Elliott Holt, who contributed its penultimate essay, discuss Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Predation
There is a legend in Central America of an evil Black Cadejo, who is malevolent with glowing red eyes, and who stands on two feet like a man.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: A Roundtable on Writing, Editing, and Race
With Lisa Factora-Borchers, Patrice Gopo, Jennifer Niesslein, Tamiko Nimura, and Deesha Philyaw.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Accidental Curators
He staggers; he loses his standoff with gravity. It was never a fair fight.
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