First and Last Songs: The Extinct Song of the Kaua‘i ‘Ö‘ö
I wanted to talk to someone who might have heard the last animal at the end of its species’ five-million-year run on earth.
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Posts Tagged: voice
A Need for a Home: Lucy Hughes-Hallett Discusses Peculiar Ground
Lucy Hughes-Hallett discusses her debut novel, Peculiar Ground, out today from HarperCollins.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #116: David Lazar
“Becoming an essayist has always seemed to me as a bit of a pratfall.”
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Zola Jesus’s Natural World
About a year ago, I ended up returning to the land where I grew up and building a house here.
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Hitch in the Voice
I hear a man singing for his life, desperate in a way he would never be again and had never been before.
...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.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: (On My Throat)
…the connection between the throat and heart and that which they represent: voice and love.
...moreFinding Your Voice
Authenticity of voice can only come from authentic work. And authentic work doesn’t come from the head; it’s an outgrowth of authentic feeling. In a post for the Ploughshares blog, Annie Weatherwax considers how writing an artistic statement can help artists and writers find their voice. She writes: “As an artist, the artistic statement requires […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Stephanie Danler
Stephanie Danler discusses her debut novel, Sweetbitter, writing sensually, and the power of an authentic voice.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jamie Brickhouse
Jamie Brickhouse discusses Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother, a memoir that chronicles his intimate, near-fatal journey through alcoholism, and living HIV positive.
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The Rumpus Interview with Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz talks about his newest novel, Ashley Bell, overcoming self-doubt, and “what this incredibly beautiful language of ours allows you to do.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Louisa Hall
Author Louisa Hall discusses her latest novel, Speak, the future of artificial intelligence, and how playing squash taught her a love of literary technique.
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
...moreOldies, Goodies
If great art is supposed to be surprising, do great writers have to change? At The Millions, Drew Nellins Smith wonders whether there can be too much of a good thing: I just get it. However much I admired his work, it had started to seem like a magic trick I’d seen a hundred times. And the magic […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Cohen
Novelist Joshua Cohen gives an interview, digital, about his new novel, paper, but also digital, about the Internet, digital, subsuming the novel, even his novel, best on paper, Book of Numbers.
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The Rumpus Interview with Kenny Porpora
Kenny Porpora discusses his memoir The Autumn Balloon, addiction and alcoholism, writing truthfully about his mother, falling asleep at Burger King with his laptop while drafting, and how he finally found his personal writing style.
...moreAutomated Authorial Voice
New autocorrect software is beginning to suggest sophisticated word alternatives that go beyond simply correcting typos, reports The New York Times. With such complicated options, the software is beginning to influence authorial voice. This automation also poses a threat to saying anything meaningful at all: “The more we don’t autonomously struggle with language, grapple to find […]
...moreIn Search of Inner Voice
Researches are taking advantage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival to look for the source of authors’ inner voice. Many writers describe hearing characters’ or narrators’ voices speaking to them. The researchers are looking to establish what the inner voice sounds like and how authors tune into it, reports The Guardian: Early on in their […]
...moreWhen a man finds his feminist voice
Daniel Jose Older has an essay in the Feminists of Color series over at Salon that is curated by Rumpus editor Roxane Gay. Daniel talks about finding his voice as a feminist: “I was immersed in the gender violence prevention world back then: a stifling, corporate environment of almost entirely white women that had no […]
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Deep Throat #7: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
He knew what he was doing when he looked at me and said, “Sing for me.” Had I been nude in his bed I would not have been as naked as I was then, stripped down to my brand new skin.
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I Did Not Vanish: On Writing
But writing poems allows me mastery over a miniature universe. For those moments or hours, I am God of my kingdom. No one tells me how things go. No one can argue against me when I’m writing poems. When I am writing, I get to speak.
...moreLights in Your Throat
The 2009 music release schedule is winding down, so people have started making their arbitrary top-whatever lists. While such rankings might be more potent some years from now, when we see which albums are actually still in rotation (like tomorrow’s Leonids meteor shower, where “trails laid down by the [meteor’s parent] comet in 1466 and […]
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