zadie smith
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Jennifer Baker
The more variation we see in life, the more it becomes less about seeing one type of book by marginalized people.
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The Rumpus Interview with Chinelo Okparanta
Chinelo Okparanta talks about her debut novel, Under the Udala Trees, her upcoming appearance at Portland’s Wordstock book festival, and LGBTQ rights in America and worldwide.
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Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
I never recoiled, in that first season, to hear the nice people on the bus say “beautiful baby,” to us in reverent tones. It’s a thanksgiving for safe passage, a prayer for all new defenseless things. But after a few months…
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The Rumpus Interview with Sean Wilsey
Sean Wilsey discusses his latest book of essays, More Curious, being David Foster Wallace’s neighbor, the healing power of the American road trip, and the difference between writing fiction and memoir.
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Urban Escape
Of course Zadie Smith’s written a science fiction epic, set on September 11, 2001, chronicling the haphazard relationship between Marlon Brando, Michael Jackson, and Elizabeth Taylor. And of course it’s based on a true story, or at least an urban…
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Writing the Story of Your Life
Keeping a diary requires strong commitment and great honesty, and Zadie Smith has struggled with the idea of journaling all through her life, as she writes in her latest essay, “Life Writing,” over at Rookie.
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Black and White and Black
Over at the New Yorker, Zadie Smith tackles Key and Peele: The two men are physically incongruous. Key is tall, light brown, dashingly high-cheek-boned, and L.A. fit; Peele is shorter, darker, more rounded, cute like a Teddy bear. Peele, who…
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This Week in Short Fiction
As the story goes, nearly 100 years ago a group of Surrealist artists gathered together and put a new spin on an old parlor game called Consequences. The meeting resulted in their collective authorship of this phrase: “The/ exquisite/ corpse/…
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Zadie Smith’s Room With a Manhattan View
The mad men know that we know the Soho being referenced here: the Soho of Roy Lichtenstein and Ivan Karp, the Soho that came before Foot Locker, Sephora, Prada, frozen yogurt. That Soho no longer exists, of course, but it’s…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Let’s dedicate this week to the publications, editors, and benevolent marketing gurus who unleashed a whole bunch of quality FREE short fiction to us. Under the shadow of the FCC’s impending decision as to whether or not net neutrality will…
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Zadie Smith: Pathological Reader
In Oprah, the author writes that her consumption of books may be absurd, but that, at least, summer is a good time to have pathological reading habits. I would like to say in my defense that I don’t really get the appeal…
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A Serious Man
In a recently tweeted series of amateur photos, artist and writer Szilvia Molnar satirizes the figure of the cool male writer so often conveyed in author portraits by the presence of a cigarette. Having noticed a discrepancy between the portrayal of…