A Spirit Born into a Human Body: Talking with Akwaeke Emezi
Akwaeke Emezi discusses her debut novel, Freshwater, her public and private identities, and deciding when to translate culture for readers.
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Posts Tagged: Women Writers of Color
VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins discusses This Will Be My Undoing, getting her start on the Internet, and why her collection of linked personal essays isn’t just another Millennial read.
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An Ethnography of the Self: Talking with Morgan Parker
Morgan Parker discusses her writing process, approaching an idea from various forms, and how moving from NYC to L.A. has changed her work.
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The Ability to Pass Becomes Her Cage: Talking with SJ Sindu
SJ Sindu discusses her new novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, queer readings of Hindu scriptures, and issues of privilege and power.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Aurvi Sharma
Aurvi Sharma discusses her memoir-in-progress, finding inspiration in ancient women’s voices, and writing against erasure.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Lola StVil
Lola StVil discusses her latest novel, Girls Like Me, how her characters demand to be written, what her family thinks of her writing career, and why representation is essential.
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The Rumpus Mini Interview #109: Anaïs Duplan
“The freedom to have a sovereign identity is so often a trap. It’s impossible.”
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More Than Just a Single Identity: A Conversation with Camille T. Dungy
Camille T. Dungy discusses her prose debut, Guidebook to Relative Strangers, traveling across America as a black mother, and spaces of inclusion and exclusion.
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The Woman Behind the Curtain Pulling the Levers: Talking with Zinzi Clemmons
Zinzi Clemmons on What We Lose, representations of blackness, and life’s influences on writing.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Faith Adiele
Faith Adiele discusses what it means to be a good literary citizen, the importance of decolonizing travel writing, and how she wants to change the way Black stories are being told.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth talks about her latest book, Buckskin Cocaine, persevering through rejection, and white writers writing Native characters.
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In Between the In-Between: Talking with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang discusses her story collection Sour Heart, trying to escape the past, collective versus individual responsibility for trauma, and love as imprisonment.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby discusses her new collection, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, her reluctance to call herself a writer, and writing for the “cream jeans” crowd.
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A Specific Kind of Loneliness: In Conversation with Geeta Kothari
Geeta Kothari discusses her debut collection, American xenophobia, and the immigrant narrative.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Lisa Factora-Borchers
Lisa Factora-Borchers talks about being a Catholic feminist, writing across genres, and pushing back against a singular narrative about New York.
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On Grief and Inheritance: A Conversation with Brionne Janae
The poet Brionne Janae discusses her debut poetry collection After Jubilee, intergenerational trauma, and writing her way into historical personae.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura
Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.
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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. Benz’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, The American Reader, and Granta.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas discusses her debut novel, The Hate U Give, landing an agent on Twitter, and why she trusts teenagers more than the publishing industry.
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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.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Yona Harvey
Yona Harvey talks about her path to becoming a poet, Winnie Mandela as an artistic inspiration, and what it means to write more publicly.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Abeer Hoque
Abeer Hoque talks about coming of age in the predominantly white suburbs of Pittsburgh, rewriting her memoir manuscript ten times, and looking for poetry in prose.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tara Betts
Tara Betts discusses her newest collection, Break the Habit, the burden placed on black women artists to be both artist and activist, and why writing is rooted in identity.
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The Rumpus Interview with Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay discusses her new collection, Difficult Women, the problem with whiteness as the default and the need for diverse representation, and life as a workaholic.
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Writer-actor-comedian Phoebe Robinson’s debut essay collection is You Can’t Touch My Hair: and Other Things I Still Have to Explain. As Janice Roshalle Littlejohn writes for the LARB blog, “Her writing is relatable and woke, confronting racism and how to cope with white guilt, feminism and female issues, and America’s problematic relationship with black hair.” Robinson […]
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Cole Lavalais
Cole Lavalais discusses her debut novel, Summer of the Cicadas, why she’s a huge fan of outlining, and the importance of dedicated communities for black writers.
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