The Guardian
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Josie Pickens
Josie Pickens talks about building relationships through blogging, changing the narrative around black women in America, and eradicating silence through storytelling.
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Another Lost Work by a Dead Writer
If it seems that “lost” books, short stories, and everything else are coming out of the woodwork, well, they are. The Strand magazine has just published Twixt Cup and Lip, an early play by William Faulkner written in the 1920s: The…
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The Lessons of Mapplethorpe
It might be ill-advised to reduce an artist’s life and work to a single observation, the magic key that unlocks everything, but in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe there is a pronounced duality—in the themes and subjects depicted in his…
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Literary Losers
Umberto Eco, at a public appearance in the UK to support Numero Zero, imparted some choice thoughts on what makes literature, and on what makes his distinct, from conspiracies and public knowledge to literary losers: It’s very boring to talk about…
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I’m Sorry, Who?
One of the things I run into surprisingly often is people saying to me, ‘I’ve never heard of you before’… Yet I’ve been publishing in ‘mainstream’ journals and my book won [the Pulitzer] prize, so what is it that is…
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The Power of the Ellipses
The Guardian presents a history of this tantalizing punctuation. They’re irresistible…
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Remember That I’m Human Too
While many authors have embraced social media and enjoy being available to readers, others feel that their only responsibility to the reader is to write good books. Novelist Joanne Harris sparked this conversation when she suggested a writer’s manifesto for the…
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An Exercise in Failure
I did give it up. I actually destroyed the manuscript, I even went on my friends computers and erased it.” He said he retrieved the text by searching in the email outbox of an old iMac computer. Marlon James, who…
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Judging a Book by More than Its Cover
Choosing the winner of the largest prize in English Literature is no easy task. Man Booker judge Sam Leith discusses the challenges of taking on this responsibility over at the Guardian.
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Digital Technology is Valid Literature
Digital technology is changing literature. Those changes are more than just variations on traditional forms like the novel. Video game storytelling, for instance, is a perfectly valid form of art and yet often lacks recognition in the literary world. That needs to…
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Stephen Pinker, Deplorer of the Dangling Modifier
After having written 800 pages on torture, rape, world war, and genocide, it was time to take on some really controversial topics like fused participles, dangling modifiers, and the serial comma. Over at the Guardian, Steven Pinker defends his choice to…
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The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Gira Grant
Melissa Gira Grant talks sex workers’ rights, labor politics, the novelty of women’s sexuality, and her book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.