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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Posts Tagged: rivka galchen
Notable Twin Cities: 10/20–10/26
Literary events in and around the Twin Cities this week!
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Notable NYC: 5/11–5/17
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 4/6–4/12
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 9/22–9/28
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
...moreNotable NYC: 11/25–12/1
Literary events and readings in and around New York City this week!
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What to Read When You Want to Write Like a Mother
A list of books that wrangle, directly or indirectly, with motherhood and all that comes with it (or its absence).
...moreNotable NYC: 9/9–9/15
Literary events and readings in and around New York City this week!
...moreNotable NYC: 4/15–4/31
Saturday 4/15: Protest in support of releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns. Bryant Park, 1 p.m., free. Thom Donovan and Marissa Perel join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 4/16: Tongo Eisen-Martin, Mahogany Browne, and Jive Poetic read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 3 p.m., free.
...moreNotable NYC: 3/4–3/10
Saturday 3/4: Peter Blackstock, senior editor at Grove Atlantic, curates Queer as Volk as part of the Festival Neue Literatur. Powerhouse Arena, 6 p.m, free. Timothy Liu and Christopher Salerno launch new books of poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7 p.m., free. Michael Nicoloff and Christopher Stackhouse join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. […]
...moreNotable NYC: 2/25–3/3
Saturday 2/25: Christian Hawkey and Himanshu Suri join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Emily Brandt and Ali Power join the SOLO reading series. Wendy’s Subway, 7 p.m., free. Sunday 2/26: Nicole Steinberg celebrates the release of Glass Actress with Niina Pollari, Sarah Jean Grimm, and Esther Lin. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 4 p.m., […]
...moreNotable NYC: 2/4–2/10
Saturday 2/4: John Domini and Carole Firstman celebrate releases from Dzanc Books. KGB Bar, 7 p.m., free. Cecilia Corrigan and Wendy Trevino join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 2/5: Chelsea Hodson, Gregory Zorko, Sarah Jean Grimm, Liz Bowen, Georgia Faust, and Amanda Dissinger read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 3 p.m., free.
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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.
...moreBaby as Muse
Lucy Ives writes about Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors for the Los Angeles Review of Books: It’s a study of a baby and of babies, of culture and of vulnerability. Most of all, it’s a study of everything one has missed perceiving previous to the arrival of a child. Galchen’s book is an “extended essay vérité,” […]
...moreArt as Moral Privilege
For the New York Times Bookends column, Rivka Galchen walks us through a deceptively simple poem by Zbigniew Herbert to illustrate a philosophy that supports both the abstract and the moral responsibility of art. She posits that “there is a way in which art for art’s sake is the art most open to all comers, and most […]
...moreOrdinary Days of Grandeur
Don’t miss the weekly staff picks over at the Paris Review. Lorin Stein recommends Brenda Shaughnessy’s soulful and stripped down So Much Synth, Jeffery Gleaves praises “mother writer” Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors, and Caitlin Youngquist writes of Bernadette Mayer’s Works and Days, “Hardly any of Mayer’s days are spectacular, but her eye is so keenly […]
...moreWriting Motherhood
…motherhood is an undiscovered country in the literary sense, one we must venture into lest our experience goes unrecorded, or recorded only by men. At the New York Times, Sarah Ruhl reviews Rivka Galchen’s new collection of essays, Little Labors, and imagines a rich and intimate solidarity, even friendship, between herself and Galchen as mothers. She […]
...moreWomen Writers, Whatever That Means
I had considered envying men before—I pretend to envy things like their higher incidence of ungrounded confidence and monomania, but I don’t really envy those things, and I’m not sure I even believe in them… In an excerpt published in the New Yorker from her forthcoming book, Rivka Galchen writes about her first experience of real […]
...moreThe Literary Deadly Sins
For the New York Times‘s Bookends column, Rivka Galchen and Benjamin Moser muse on the question of which transgressions in literature are unforgivable: For me, the unforgivable sin in literature is the same as that in life: the assumption of certainty and the moral high ground. That words like “righteous” and “pious” are often used to […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
...moreNotable NYC: 3/21–3/27
Saturday 3/21: Phil Klay reads from his National Book Award for Fiction collection Redeployment. He is joined in conversation by Rob Spillman. Brooklyn Public Library, 4 p.m., free. Rob Crawford, Sabra Embury, Hannah Assadi, Genna Rivieccio, Amanda Killian, Armando Jaramillo Garcia, Stu Watson, and Daniel Adler celebrate opiates. Mellow Pages Library, 7:30 p.m., free. Cynthia […]
...moreNotable NYC: 12/6–12/12
Saturday 12/6: Nicholas Mugavero and Lawrence Giffin join the Segue Reading Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Kristen Kosmas, Holly Melgard, and Romsey Scott read poetry. Wendy’s Subway, 8 p.m., free. Sunday 12/7: Diana Hamilton, Kim Rosenfield, Charity Coleman, and Jeffery Berg join the Fantasy Reading Series, No. 4. Bowery Poetry Club, 8:30 p.m., $12. […]
...moreNotable NYC: 11/29–12/05
Saturday 11/29: Support your independent bookstores on Small Business Saturday. Monday 12/1: Daphne Merkin reads from her new collection of essays, The Fame Lunches: On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontes, and the Importance of Handbags. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Tuesday 12/2: L. Lamar Wilson, Wendy Xu, and Rachel Zucker read as part of the […]
...moreThe Unteachable Dark
Writers Rivka Galchen and Zoë Heller, over at The New York Times, discuss the question that will never go away: can writing be taught? They raise valid points about whether teaching writing is fundamentally different from teaching something like science and the rigid way American high schools teach essay writing. Galchen also ponders whether the best writers […]
...moreNotable NYC: 5/24–5/30
Saturday 5/24: Judith Goldman and Andy Sterling join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Alex Wright, Michael Lazan, Sharon Guskin, and David Zweig read in the Brooklyn Writers Space series. BookCourt, 7 p.m., free. Sunday 5/25: Erika K. Stanley, Charif Shanahan, Dina Nayeri, and Elizabeth Eslami celebrate the one-year anniversary of The Manhattanville […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
May is Short Story Month! In honor of StoryADay’s second annual celebration, Flavorwire writers offered their recommendations of five stories worth a read, from Calvino to O’Connor. On Monday, Gawker held a live-chat interview with Rivka Galchen about her new short story collection, American Innovations. All 10 of the stories in the collection are told […]
...moreNotable NYC: 5/3–5/9
Saturday 5/3: Joanna Fuhrman, Dan Magers, and Debora Kuan launch the Hyperallergic Poetry reading series. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7:30 p.m., free. Melanie Neilson and Kate Zambreno join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 5/4: Kodi Scheer and Rene Steinke read prose. Scheer’s Incendiary Girls (April 2014) is a collection of stories exploring […]
...moreFiction or Non fiction: That is the question
Is it true that nowadays nonfiction is more relevant than fiction? Pankaj Mishra and Rivka Galchen answer the question and both their answers are dissimilar. Mishra answers, “Even writers working within the old verities of stability and coherence — we cannot do without some of them — continue to produce persuasive fictions.” Galchen observes, “Fiction […]
...moreModern Reader #4: Without Style
I often wonder if reviews can be great. Can a book (or an essay) that is essentially “about” another book compare to an original work?
...moreNotable New York, This Week 4/19 – 4/25
This week in New York NOON launches Issue 9 with a reading and party, a reading by notable New Yorkers of stories on their first time in New York, Maile Chapman and Ethan Nosowsky converse, Synesthesia–a game of artistic telephone–begins, and PopRally helps you silksreen record sleeves while listening to Real Estate live. MONDAY 4/19: […]
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