writing
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The Rumpus Interview with Rick Moody
Rick Moody talks about the newly collected writings of the elusive Reginald Edward Morse, Hotels of North America, and why fiction in general ought to lie more.
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Famous Rejections Show Publishing’s Shortcomings
Rejection is often cited as an essential part of writing. Rejection is even celebrated, as if great works must be first overlooked and then pulled from obscurity. Consider Marlon James, 2015 Man Booker Prize winner: his first manuscript was rejected eighty times.…
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The Rumpus Interview with Valeria Luiselli
Valeria Luiselli talks about her new novel, The Story of My Teeth, working with a translator to publish her books in English, and how writing in weekly installments changed her process.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Taking Comfort in Futurama
I’m a comfort watcher… I retreat into the worlds I know well, with characters that are friends, with outcomes I already understand.
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The Rumpus Interview with Bill Clegg
Author and agent Bill Clegg talks about his new novel, Did You Ever Have A Family, grief in fiction and in life, and why there is no finish line except the final finish line.
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The Rumpus Interview with Zarina Zabrisky
Zarina Zabrisky talks about her new book, Explosion, the art of the short story, Russia and Ukraine, and being “a Jewish pessimist in the spirit of Shalom Aleichem.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Kate Bolick
Kate Bolick talks about her new book, Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, writing and the nuclear family, and whether women are finally people yet.
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Oh, Crap, I Still Have to Write a Book
Over at the New Yorker, George Saunders maps out his writing education, from Tobias Wolff’s call to his parents’ house to tell him about his acceptance to the Syracuse Creative Writing Program, Doug Unger’s continual excitement and teaching, the loss…
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Writing from the Basement
I never bring my computer with me to the basement, and the discipline of the method is to force myself to work out the ideas, the arrangement of the argument or story before I start building paragraphs and sentences. For…
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Writing the Uncanny Divide
Marjorie Sandor writes for the Masters Review on the art of writing the uncanny. Sandor explores the 19th century origins of the word, whose use in literature seemed to address the blurring of boundaries in history, science, and the emerging…
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
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The Rumpus Interview with Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg talks about his debut, City on Fire, living in New York City now and in the ’70s, and the anxiety and gratitude you feel when your first novel generates so much buzz.