Why Write
-
The Rumpus Interview with Jaclyn Friedman
I’ve been interested in talking and educating about rape, safety and sexuality for most of my adult life.
-
Skateboarding Writers
McSweeney’s interviews skateboarding pro turned writer, Bret Anthony Johnston, who has written about skateboarding and school for The New York Times. He is now the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, and he writes regularly for All Things…
-
Complex Innovative Literary Prize
The Warwick Prize for Writing is an “innovative new literature prize that involves global competition, and crosses all disciplines. The Prize will be given biennially for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre…
-
The Universal Threat of Loneliness
“The End of Solitude” by William Deresiewicz begins with the question, “What does the contemporary self want?” He answers after two sentences: “Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the contemporary self wants . .…
-
On Teaching Poetry to Women in Prison
I was nineteen. Prison seemed sexy and foreign—as did most forbidden things.
-
How My First Book Got Published
How many times do you really face a choice in life? How many times will you get the benefit of arriving at a crossroads, where you don’t have to fight the tug of rolling inertia, and your choice isn’t going…
-
WHY I MUST GIVE UP WRITING
First let me say I’ve been a dedicated writer for half a century. I’ve published twenty-five books, and I’ve even won some prizes. I know a real writer is supposed to write for the art itself, yearning only toward self-expression
-
A (Not- comprehensive) List of Books That Changed The World
Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield Banana: The fate of the fruit that changed the world by Dan Koeppel How William Shatner Changed the World by William Shatner
-
Why I Write Fiction
by RABIH ALAMEDDINE When I was about to publish my first novel, a writer tried to prepare me for what was to come. It doesn’t matter what novel you write, she said, you will be asked how true it is.
-
Rumpus Original – On Teaching Poetry To Women In Prison
I was nineteen. Prison seemed sexy and foreign—as did most forbidden things. Maybe I wanted to seem tough. Maybe I needed something to differentiate me from all the other over-achieving, world-traveled students at the university I attended. Maybe I felt…