The Imprint of a Mind: Jazmina Barrera’s Linea Nigra
This sparse book, “an essay on pregnancy and earthquakes,” deals with the author’s dueling fears of recent and future earthquakes and her impending childbirth.
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Posts Tagged: rivka galchen
The Fractures of Motherhood: Julia Fine’s The Upstairs House
Like Fine’s uniquely constructed book, being a mom is to be permanently fractured.
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Notable Online: 6/13–6/19
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 6/6–6/12
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 5/16–5/22
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 11/15–11/21
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Homage as Provocation: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Sansei and Sensibility
Pretend you are Austen. Enact an Austen novel. And what will happen?
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Notable Online: 6/28–7/4
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 5/31–6/6
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 4/12–4/18
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable NYC: 2/29–3/6
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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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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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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