This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...more
Posts Tagged: Vermont
Losing Paradise
What my mind cannot yet fathom, my body already knows.
...more
Voices on Addiction: A Conversation with Emily Arnason Casey
Emily Arnason Casey discusses her debut essay collection, MADE HOLY.
...moreThe Summer of Lana Del Rey
Three summers ago, I did nothing but drive around Middlebury, Vermont, blasting Lana Del Rey and chain-smoking cigarettes. It was—and I will be dramatic, because that is how it felt—an act of survival. That summer I was in an academic program where we were only allowed to speak or be spoken to in French. But […]
...more
TORCH: My American Playground
I left the car by the roadside and ran up the slope, in tears now, reaching the picnic tables and swings and, as bright and vivid as in my dreams, my purple-shaped climbing frame, exactly as I remembered it.
...more
Interrogating the English Language with Safiya Sinclair
To be forced to speak in the language of the colonist, the language of the oppressor, while also carrying within us the storm of Jamaican patois, we live under a constant hurricane of our doubleness.
...more
The Trouble with Confidence
“But what are the statistics? Aren’t you taking a similar risk just driving?” Wide-eyed, attentive, he leans forward slightly.
...moreThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #58: James Steven Sadwith
A self-described “actor’s director,” James Steven Sadwith has been writing, directing, and producing television movies, miniseries, and dramas for nearly three decades—and is perhaps best known for his work on the lives of Frank Sinatra and Elvis. But for Coming through the Rye, his first feature film for the big screen, Sadwith comes closer to […]
...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.
...moreA Library for Two Countries
Situated along the US-Canada border, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House “is the only library in the world that exists and operates in two countries at once,” Atlas Obscura reports.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jensen Beach
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Jensen Beach about his short story collection Swallowed by the Cold, suburbia in Sweden, quiet racism, and writing a series of connected short stories.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Suit
It was as if he understood that the authentic must begin in the voice. And through the texture of the voice—its moral and psychological claims—sensory details emerge with absolute authority.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Pale of Vermont
But to become a writer I needed at least to learn about my own superstitions. I needed space in the house to sketch with words. I needed to commit heresies. And those acts had to feel pleasurable.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Texas Roses
It’s a matter of self-composition: Keep concentrating, type faster—take a breath and hold it—and do it again.
...more
Proof of Passage
The scrutiny left me angry and exposed. We know; we are not whole. The unraveling was so slow; we were each undone, stitch by stitch.
...more
Nuclear Family
This is how I understood the nucleus: the minimum of what we need, and that which forms the “originating core” or heart of us, the three of us.
...more
Songs of Our Lives: Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope”
Distance always seduced me—distance from whatever was most familiar, especially myself—but the difficulties in achieving such remove vexed me.
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
In the Saturday Interview, May Cobb talks with Austin-based multi-instrumentalist Guy Forsyth about The Freedom to Fail, his first studio album in six years. In a touching aside about his daughter, Forsyth explains the album title: “…she can only grow to the extent that she reaches for things.” Their discussion is framed by the backdrop […]
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Symposium on Plot (Road)
A rural meditation on the meaning of plot and place.
...more
Multiplicity
As I held the passport in my hand, I realized that both marriage and gender have a life beyond my own. Somewhere, my citizenship gender had been on file. Somewhere, a record of me existed that over-ruled my daily existence. Here, I was a man. There, I had been female.
...more