The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #83: Lauren Grodstein
After writing several books (A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything) from a male point of view, Lauren Grodstein’s new novel, Our Short History, is an intimate glimpse into a woman’s life, at a critical juncture between life and…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #82: Cecil Castellucci
The artistic oeuvre of Cecil Castellucci is dauntingly varied and vast. A singer/songwriter, a playwright, a librettist, she is also the author of many books, ranging from the picture book Grandma’s Gloves (winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal)…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #81: Chanelle Benz
Chanelle Benz’s debut collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, is filled with characters often facing a moral crossroads. The stories contain the unexpected, like a classic Western complete with local brothel as well as a gothic tale.…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview #80: Jon Raymond
Jon Raymond is one of Portland’s finest wordsmiths. His writing spans TV, film, short story, novel, art criticism, and a hefty array of magazine work. His new novel, Freebird, is the story of a Californian Jewish family entangled in clashing…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #79: Kelcey Parker Ervick
The woman whose face appears on the Czech five-hundred koruna doesn’t appear there without consequence. During the late 19th century, politically active Božena Němcová was an innovator of Czech literature. Twenty-first century writer Kelcey Parker Ervick continues Němcová’s legacy in…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #78: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
In 2016, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s writing won the Narrative Poetry Contest. Bertram’s work is formally and thematically expansive and this sampling, called “Facts About Deer and Other Poems,” showcases her incredible range. In the poem “They were armed with long guns”—a…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #77: Hauschka
Lion could be a simple homecoming story, the prodigal son returning to the place he was born. Except, the son in question was six when he left. Now, he’s twenty-six and his story is far from simple. Garth Davis’s film,…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #76: Chris Tusa
Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Chris Tusa’s second novel, In the City of Falling Stars (Livingston Press, September 2016), tells a tale of paranoia and intrigue. Maurice Delahoussaye witnesses dead birds falling from the sky, and becomes convinced the air is…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #75: Deborah Kampmeier
I met Deborah Kampmeier at a workshop in November. We were two weeks post-election; the room was raw with emotion, and electric with conversations about resistance. This tall, badass woman dressed in all black sauntered into the room, and chose a…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #74: Alexandra Naughton
Alexandra Naughton is a writer who grew up in Philadelphia but converted to a California girl in 2008. She runs BE ABOUT IT, a small press and reading series and is an active member in Bay Area literary shenanigans. Over the…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #73: Maggie Shipstead
I first met Maggie Shipstead in 2011 when she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She had not yet published her first novel, Seating Arrangements, which would later become a New York Times bestseller, but even then the magnitude…
-
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #72: Laurie Sheck
Laurie Sheck is the author, most recently, of Island of the Mad, and A Monster’s Notes, a re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry for The Willow Grove, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, as well…