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Slouching Toward Vantage: A Conversation with Taneum Bambrick
There are a few occasions in my reading life when I’ve felt the lightning bolt of instant recognition with a writer. The kind of experience where I look up from a book to ask out loud, “How did this...
View ArticleGrounded by Circumstance: Tina Barr’s Green Target
In her essay “Dynamic Design: The Structure of Books of Poems,” Natasha Sajé stresses the importance of gesture and the necessity for a book of poems to open in a way that “seize[s] the reader’s...
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The Spot You’re Standing In: A Conversation with Chris Dennis
There is something of the divine in Chris Dennis. He is such a magical combination of humor and brilliance; he quotes cultural theorists, seems to have read everything, and yet maintains that...
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Deep, Wide, and Ridiculous: Talking with Diane Seuss
“I didn’t know that what I was writing were poems,” Diane Seuss tells me of her first literary forays. “I believe my ignorance was fortunate. It ushered in invention.” That invention still plays out in...
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Barbara Berman’s 2019 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
In keeping with Rumpus tradition, Barbara Berman reviews collections of poetry and books on poetics that would be perfect for any reader on your holiday shopping list—or for yourself. And remember, you...
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No One Is Disposable: Talking with Emma Copley Eisenberg
Emma Copley Eisenberg’s stunning debut, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, in which she chronicles her time living in Pocahontas County, West Virginia and delves...
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Between Illusion and Reality: A Conversation with Erin Pringle
Erin Pringle’s third book and debut novel, Hezada! I Miss You, was released earlier this month from Austin-based Awst Press. As a local Austinite, I’ve watched Awst Press move from an idea to a reality...
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers about her new book The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons (Acre Books, March 2020), sonnet crowns, formal experimentation, the Mars rover,...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Howard County Rapture
It was a Friday morning at 9:34 a.m. when the Rapture occurred. Dan Sapp of Dan Sapp Automotive and Dan Sapp Roadside Assistance was pouring himself another cup of Folgers from the twenty-year-old Mr....
View ArticleLingering on Darkness: Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Bestiality. Bone squishing into brain. A child choked with extension cords. When Ashleigh Bryant Phillips lets loose, she can shock. Her debut, the short story collection Sleepovers, is lush with...
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A Very Queer Book: Talking with Carter Sickels
I’ve been a superfan of Carter Sickels’s work ever since I was a baby queer who came across his first (gorgeous) novel The Evening Hour in the Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room. Somehow that...
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Queering the Southern Gothic: A Conversation with Genevieve Hudson
I’ve been reading and loving Genevieve Hudson’s smart, strange, heart-wrecking work for nearly a decade. It was thrilling to see her work catch fire in 2018 with a fabulous story collection, Pretend We...
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Alison Stine
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Alison Stine about her debut novel for adults, Road Out of Winter (MIRA Books, September 2020), finding the story’s origins in a dream, why she loves Appalachian Ohio,...
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No Unnecessary Touching: A Conversation with C. Kubasta
A family remodeling their home who discover unsettling things in the walls. A woman haunted by an ex-boyfriend’s dying mother. Strategies for living with loneliness, shame, and how to remove a tick....
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Re-Contextualizing Dolly Parton in Her Full Glory: Talking with Sarah Smarsh
In She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, author Sarah Smarsh dissects the decades-long career of a universally beloved but oft misunderstood country icon. Originally...
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Stories without Veils: Talking with Athena Dixon
“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.” – Miles Davis Athena Dixon’s debut memoir-in-essays, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, is a nostalgic, compelling journey of...
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Save St. Mark’s
St. Mark’s Medical Center is the iconic rural hospital politicians on all sides claim to be saving; it’s also where my mother has worked as a surgical nurse for over thirty years. In this tucked-away...
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If My Body Were a House
My body is electric with desire when I realize I haven’t been held for months. I swipe back and forth on photos of strangers in an eternal quest for that rat-pellet hit of dopamine: a rainbow in the...
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Mike Alberti
If Mike Alberti weren’t a fiction writer, I imagine he’d be a master builder, the kind with the square pencil behind his ear who constructs a house so every inch is level and sturdy and glowing. His...
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Always in Flux: A Conversation with Shy Watson
The poems in Shy Watson’s new collection, Horror Vacui, speak to the many different lives we lead within a single lifetime and how we understand ourselves within the context of our varied experiences....
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