Tao Lin, The Last Book I Loved: Honored Guest
One of my favorite books is the story-collection Honored Guest (2004) by Joy Williams. I like it to a degree that its “flaws” seem to function “completely” as contributors to its “tone,” which I like,...
View ArticleTwenty and Bored and Alive
“This voice is neither howl, yowl, nor whisper, but something more like a quiet monotone, slightly ironic and yet also depressed, lonely, and compellingly vulnerable.”Zachary German’s debut novel, Eat...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Interview with Maggie Nelson
I have known Maggie Nelson for more then ten years. We met in NYC just before she decamped to Los Angles to teach at CalArts. Maggie is that rare writer, a true woman of letters. She writes poetry,...
View ArticleThis Week in Short Fiction
After ten long years without a new story collection from Joy Williams, we are finally rewarded this week with The Visiting Privilege, containing thirteen new stories and thirty-three stories collected...
View ArticleDog Sees God
A preacher cares for his daughter’s child while she has a nervous breakdown in a foreign land. A teenager watches her mother slowly die. Another teen mourns his father, who that summer had been...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel’s debut collection, Upright Beasts, has been highly anticipated and greatly praised, and for good reason: it’s a dark, dreamy spiral into a world mostly like ours, but a few degrees off,...
View ArticleThe Animals Die: On Reading Joy Williams
Last things first: people die.Imagine you know nothing about Joy Williams. You pick up her book, Florida, what was once known as a “coffee table book.” It looks nice enough, filled with photos: melting...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Book Club Chat with Paul Lisicky
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Paul Lisicky about his new book The Narrow Door, how much of your story you own, Joni Mitchell, friendship and loss, and the importance of reading your own work...
View ArticleDisquiet at the Finish Line
The idea of art-making as a refuge from reality has become a cliché. But a cliché often becomes a cliché through the repeated force of being true.Jonathan Lee, author of High Dive, writes about the...
View ArticleShort Revolution
Great novels also experiment and innovate, but a short story can make a never-before-seen formal leap and then peace out, before you’re even sure what’s happened.At Electric Literature, Rebecca Schiff...
View ArticleThree Flashes of God
The child wanted to name the rabbit Actually, and could not be dissuaded from this.For its final Flash Friday column, curated by Tin House, the Guardian shares three new excerpts from Joy Williams’s...
View ArticleNinety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams
It is tempting to resist reviewing Joy Williams’ ninety-nine stories of God. Some books lend themselves to summary and analysis while others stubbornly and mysteriously resist it. Williams’ book falls...
View ArticleWriting Gives Me No Happiness
A novel wants to befriend you, a short story almost never.Over at VICE, Lincoln Michel nabbed the elusive and brilliant Joy Williams for an interview about her newest short story collection,...
View Article“The Way We Thought We Would Be Interested”
For the New Yorker, James Wood praises Joy Williams’s oblique precision:In Williams’s world, we are all wandering interlopers—adrift, trapped, groundless—looking for visitors’ privileges.Related...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jon Raymond
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Jon Raymond about his new novel Freebird, intergenerational trauma, and the unshakeable love of family. This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every...
View ArticleA Way to Make Sense of the World with Suzanne Buffam
Ever since I was a child, a good night’s sleep has eluded me. When my mom tucked me in bed at night, I peppered her with questions to make her stay longer. Once alone, I listened to my parents talking...
View ArticleChange Is Necessary: A Conversation with Kristen Arnett
If you’re on Twitter, you probably know Kristen Arnett for her love of junk food, hilarious possum photos, awful dating advice, and adorable pet family. But if you don’t know Kristen Arnett’s fiction,...
View ArticleBrain Soup and Making Things: A Conversation with Rita Bullwinkel
Rita Bullwinkel’s stories, which appear in her debut collection Belly Up (A Strange Object, May 2018), are that device an optometrist uses that shoots air into your eye. They’re potent and necessary,...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Book Club Chat with Amy Fusselman
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Amy Fusselman about her new book, Idiophone (Coffee House Press, July 2018), exploring consciousness in writing, and, of course, The Nutcracker. This is an edited...
View ArticleThe Inward Place: A Conversation with Claudia Dey
I spoke on the phone from San Diego with novelist, playwright, and clothing designer Claudia Dey while she was in her Toronto study on the top floor of an old house in the West End. Her husband, a...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....