No-Man’s Land: A Conversation with Angela Mitchell
Angela Mitchell discusses her debut collection, UNNATURAL HABITATS & OTHER STORIES.
...more
Posts Tagged: rural life
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #110: Gabrielle Bell
“We create little rituals to give us some kind of illusion of safety, to keep ourselves sane.”
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #84: Music for Spaceships
Perhaps space is an inevitable resting place for music of this kind, because time is completely different when conceived of in the vastness of space, and not only because of relativity.
...more
It’s Never Too Late to Be Found: A Conversation with Rene Denfeld
Rene Denfeld discusses her latest book, The Child Finder, the ways in which trauma traps us, and the important role of imagination in finding resilience and escape.
...more
Finding the Finally: Alice Anderson Discusses Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away
Alice Anderson on her memoir, Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away, drag, and motherhood.
...more
Peeping under the Goddamn Door: The Price of Empathy in S-Town
[F]or the first time, I really see the tradeoffs between privacy and honest-to-god, up-close empathy.
...more
Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Gabrielle Bell
Gabrielle Bell discusses her forthcoming graphic memoir, Everything Is Flammable, what it was like to mine her own life for subject matter, and how anxiety affects her work.
...more
Lone Star Cinema
In clinging to a set of memories that fade more every day, maybe I’m also clinging to an idyllic version of my own past.
...more
A List of Concerns
I’m not sure how it happened, but I’ve ventured beyond what I came to see. The end of the road, the limitless sky—I still haven’t found our prairie.
...more
Corinne Lee and Finding an Antidote to America’s Toxicity
Poet Corinne Lee on writing her epic book-length poem Plenty and finding new ways to live in a rapidly changing world.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell discusses her collection Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, the natural world as a character, and finding writing from the male point of view easier.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Angela Palm
Putting experience into words gives them less power over me, I think.
...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Rosalie Moffett
Rosalie Moffett discusses her new collection June in Eden, writing humor in poetry, using contemporary references, and trying to understand the world.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Micah Perks
Micah Perks talks about her new novel, What Becomes Us, America’s cultural and mythical heritage, and why every novel is a political novel.
...more
Sound & Vision: Arthur Fournier
Allyson McCabe talks with Arthur Fournier, an independent dealer of books, serials, manuscripts, and archives, about how he developed his niche, and how digital access has both enriched and complicated the work of archiving and collecting.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Life’s inequities can be cruel, but in the end we are all part of our communities; suffering though we may be, we are not alone.
...more
The Last Book I Loved: So Long, See You Tomorrow
By drawing us into his childhood, Maxwell shows us how to revisit our own. We become the storytellers of our own lives.
...more
This October Sunday
Here we are again, another one-run game, another last chance.
...more
Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Kathryn Stripling Byer
I reached out to her, and she reached back. A hug I’ll never forget.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Lee Clay Johnson
Lee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Jonathan Corcoran
Jonathan Corcoran discusses his debut collection The Rope Swing, Appalachian writing communities, getting disowned by his family for coming out, and his father’s death.
...moreThe Other Half
By forcing blue-state liberal types to reckon with a demographic they had long dismissed as a punch line—low-income, uneducated whites in economically depleted regions—he [Donald Trump] awakened them to the fact that the groovy progressive social values they had assumed were a national fait accompli were actually only half the story. At the New York Times, […]
...moreWhen Home Doesn’t Embrace
Roxane Gay is from the Midwest, but as a woman of color she feels like an outsider in the rural places she often inhabits. In an essay for Brevity, “Black in Middle America,” Gay examines reactions to her face in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a place so remote “my blackness was more curiosity than threat”, and in Illinois’s cornfields—somewhere blackness […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Chicago bookstores are worried about the arrival of a physical Amazon store. One bookstore is using clickbait tactics on social media to trick people into reading more books. Some people actually like airport bookstores. A rural Virginia bookstore has become wildly successful.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Robin MacArthur
Robin MacArthur discusses her debut story collection Half Wild, life in rural Vermont, and how narrative—and fiction—is key to reaching across what divides us.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Annie DeWitt
Annie DeWitt discusses her debut novel, White Nights in Split Town City, the 90s, and the brutality of nature.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Ranbir Singh Sidhu discusses his new novel, Deep Singh Blue, growing up in rural California, and the privileged, problematic world of publishing.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Saša Stanišić
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Saša Stanišić about his novel Before the Feast, the challenge of writing a plural narrator, working with a translator, and book tours in Germany.
...more
The Rumpus Interview With Jeremy Earl
Jeremy Earl discusses his latest album, City Sun Eater in the River of Light, the fruitful tension of city vs. country, finding beauty in the darkness of today’s world, and the enduring good vibes of the Grateful Dead.
...more