The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Beth Alvarado
Beth Alvarado discusses her new story collection, JILLIAN IN THE BORDERLANDS.
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Join NOW!Beth Alvarado discusses her new story collection, JILLIAN IN THE BORDERLANDS.
...moreJason Allen discusses his debut novel, THE EAST END.
...moreElizabeth McCracken discusses her new novel, BOWLAWAY.
...moreLeslie Jamison discusses The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, understanding that every text is incomplete, and whether motherhood has changed her writing.
...moreIf you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
...moreJohn Freeman, Executive Editor at Lit Hub, talks with Suzanne Koven about his new print-only literary magazine Freeman’s, the difference between between criticism and editing, and his fear of flying.
...moreRaymond Carver and other “Kmart realists” championed the working class in high-brow literary fiction. But has the realism of the 99% gone out of style? Electric Literature explores.
...moreProlific author Marian Thurm talks about her new collection of stories, Today is Not Your Day, being a true New Yorker, and the importance of sympathetic characters.
...moreDavid 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.
...moreMusician Owen Ashworth on his new album, Nephew in the Wild, literary influences, self-expression in songwriting, and how becoming a father has changed his work.
...moreFor The Millions, Lauren Alwan provides “a brief history” and analysis of colloquial titles, including works from authors like Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Lorrie Moore, and Raymond Carver. In addition, Alwan offers her insights as to what makes colloquial titles so appealing: There is a certain power in hearing phrases we know and may have used […]
...moreSome deep part of me thinks that this is all poetry is, at best: a clear record of a moment where something catches.
...moreWayne Harrison discusses his debut novel, The Spark and the Drive, fiction, working as a correctional officer, and Carl Benz’s three-wheeled Motor Car.
...morePulitzer Prize–winning novelist Richard Ford discusses his new book, Let Me Be Frank With You, how metaphor shapes our world, and why he doesn’t like the idea he has a battery to recharge.
...moreBirdman boils down to the same essential question of how we spend our days, and how those days add up to our years. How we make our story matter, and whether legacy is the point of existence, in how we measure the worth of our lives.
...moreFor the Guardian, Robert McCrum visits acclaimed novelist Richard Ford on the Irish coast, where the author travels every year to hunt woodcock. The two discuss the trajectory of Ford’s career and his intimate relationship with the late Raymond Carver. I loved him (Carver) and still miss him every day. We liked to hunt and fish, and […]
...moreBirdman, the new film starring Michael Keaton, is centered around a theatrical adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” At Electric Literature, Halimah Marcus discusses what the film can teach writers about writing short stories.
...moreIn the beginning the words flowed like honey, like maple syrup, like corn syrup; yes, the metaphors flowed just like that.
...moreT.C. Boyle, who has now written over twenty books, talks to The Rumpus about his most recent short story collection, four decades of cooking up high-grade literary tales, the importance of performance during readings, and life at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
...moreThink of the year 1984 and your mind can’t help but jump to great books, thanks to George Orwell’s dystopic classic. But what about 1983? To put some sparkle back in 1983’s literary eye, the AV Club rounded up ten of the year’s excellent but underappreciated books. It’s true: despite being praiseworthy books by big-name […]
...moreThe brief unresolved narratives of Adam Ross’s new short story collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, show regular people with compelling problems.
...moreThe book blogs had a great week — here’s some of what they have to say: This is very cool. Check out The Underground Library, a community in which “books are given out to Members of the Library, who are asked to SIGN their name by the Due Date and PASS the book to someone […]
...moreIt’s Raymond Carver night at the Rumpus! Moments after I wrote and scheduled the preceding post, I saw this tweet from the Library of America: “WSJ on Raymond Carver: ‘There must be few story collections whose notes offer more melodrama than the main text.’ ” Then they offered a link to the Wall Street Journal […]
...more“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is stunningly desolate, a group of stories so laconic they almost perfectly reflect the resignation of characters struggling with alcoholism, infidelity and the desperation of diminished dreams… “Despite the book’s success, Carver was unhappy at how he was labeled; “There’s something about ‘minimalist,’ ” he grumbled […]
...moreAnyone who has ever been in a creative writing workshop knows the type of shame ordinarily suffered only by lifestyle submissives. And in the new Bookforum, Mark Grief, while reviewing Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, plays with McGurl’s idea that the shame inherent in academia has in fact helped define an entire era of literature.
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