January 11, 2012
Roxane Gay shout-outs some books she’s looking forward to in 2012.
Short Flight/ Long Drive books has never put out a book that wasn’t excellent (Big World, Avian Gospels, etc.) so Fast Machine’s excellence is a sure thing. Ellen’s writing is amazing. I am a closet fan of everything she writes from essays to poetry to short fiction and it will be nice to have some of her writing, old and new, collected in one book. The best thing about Ellen’s writing is that it has big brass balls. There is seemingly nothing she won’t write about but more than the fearlessness is how Ellen writes about anything. She is willing to go there over and over and over but she does so really, really well. If you’re not familiar with Ellen’s work, start with “The Last American Woman,” and “bulldyke” and “What Was Meant.” You’ll see what I mean.
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#elizabeth ellen #The Rumpus #Roxane Gay #Fast Machine
February 26, 2012
We haven’t been keeping up to date, but a couple of years ago, the New Yorker fiction podcast was something we looked forward to every month. Richard Ford reading Cheever’s “Reunion” was my introduction to the story, and I’ve listened to it at least a half a dozen times since. Joshua Ferris reading George Saunders’ “Adams” is another incredibly relistenable classic. Tobias Wolff read Stephanie Vaughn’s “Dog Heaven” and we weren’t familiar with her work before, but kind of fell in love with this story. Have since read and loved Sweet Talk and am excited about its rerelease.
Over at The Rumpus this morn, I interview my old teacher Stephanie Vaughn about the re-release of Sweet Talk. Somehow we also get to Amish people, intuition, and digging fiction ditches. If you don’t know Stephanie’s work, it’s time to know it.
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#the rumpus #Stephanie Vaughn #New Yorker #patrick somerville
Don’t you think that once you have settled into your project, whether it’s very short or very long, sitting down to work on it is part of your routine? Doesn’t it feel like digging ditches? You’re doing your job. You’re not on a high high or a low low. When you’re doing your job, the Muse will visit you. You begin a project by thinking you know where the end is, but by the time you get there, you find yourself in a different place. I think that’s a good thing, ending up somewhere new. Isn’t that how it works for everyone?
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Stephanie Vaughn - The Rumpus.net
(while we’re at it, we should note that basically every answer Vaughn gives is perfect and wonderful and pull-quote-worthy)
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#Stephanie Vaughn #the rumpus #patrick somerville
February 27, 2012
It was the back cover that really killed me: Whitney in a white bathing suit, bestriding some rocky shore like an Eighties Athena and gazing off into the distance with her hands on her hips and her chin up high. Shit, I would think. Has anyone ever been this lucky? And then: Is that really what 19 looks like?
I suppose on some level I was aware of the complication of a little white girl having such thoughts, but that didn’t make them less sincere. I could spend hours flipping the record back and forth as that very grown up voice rippled over me, wondering how God could love one person that much. She would have been remarkable without her beauty, but the fact that she also appeared to have alighted from the clouds turned her from a talent into a phenomenon, one that consolidated everything we valued most into one flawless package.
(via Habeas Whitney - The Rumpus.net, by SF/LD author Michelle Orange)
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#Whitney Houston #Michelle Orange #the rumpus
May 1, 2012
In 1993, I turn 13 a few months before Major League Baseball has its last, perfect, pre-expansion pennant race, its last full season before the Strike, which will end on my 15th birthday and curdle my love of the game for good. In 1993, my family moves from Oklahoma, for seven years a safe cocoon of familiar, to Texas, and I begin a private kind of suffocation that will continue into the next century. In 1993, to survive the eighth grade, I watch the Atlanta Braves on TBS obsessively, disappearing into my team’s exquisite pitching and the creak of Bobby Cox’s knees. In 1993, I keep a diary.
(via Tomahawk Chops & Teal Bodysuits: The 1993 Atlanta Braves & Me - The Rumpus.net)
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#jess stoner #the rumpus #baseball #diaries #Atlanta Braves #Bobby Cox
September 16, 2012
which features a fresh-to-death! redesign. The essay is about, mostly, how this one time a man tried to break into my apartment and what happened, as a direct result of that night, was I ended up nulling nearly 8 years of vegetarianism by demolishing a big fat Iowa steak. With bleu cheese spread and everything. And all I’ll say is yum…
Is it lame and/or insanely vain to have a Tumblr tracking your publications? Sometimes I think so. Actually usually I think so, but in case you don’t, I remembered this exists just in time to tell you that I’ve got a short funny thing up on Hobart’s site,
(via amyebutcher-deactivated20121207)
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#Elissa Bassist #Hobart #The Colorado Review #The Rumpus #Hobart Pulp #amy butcher #steak
December 13, 2012
i heart my lil bitch.
this chelsea martin comic went up on the rumpus yesterday. elizabeth interviewed chelsea for hobart earlier this year. holla.
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#chelsea martin #elizabeth ellen #the rumpus #hobart interviews #lil bitch
April 23, 2013
I don’t know Isaac, have never worked with him, but I like this sentence a lot:
When do you write for free? When you can put your work in the hands of an Isaac Fitzgerald.
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#Roxane Gay #The Rumpus #Isaac Fitzgerald
