Gmail just turned 20 (?!?!) and New York Magazine asked a bunch of writers to dig back in our emails for something we’d written in 2004, and talk about it. I found an email from a very wobbly time in my life, and picked it apart. Here’s the link; you can also read entries from writers like Major Jackson, Sloane Crosley, and Paul Murray.
For Oprah Daily, I wrote about revisiting my father’s hometown—and the capital of Hungary—to find traces of our shared past. You can read about it here!
Since indie bookstores need us to order our holiday gifts NOW, and since books are easy to wrap and store and ship, here’s my attempt at a 2020 Literary Christmas/Hannukah/Kwaanza/Festivus gift guide!
To find a local bookstore near you, or your giftee, check out Indiebound!
While most indie bookstores will wrap books for you, BookBub, has some excellent ideas for book wrapping yourself!
Due to my judging duties this year, I am not recommending any new American fiction, but I know you can find that on your own!
Now, to the suggestions!
I’m so thrilled to share this, finally. I compiled an oral history for Chicago Magazine of the 1990 ACT UP demonstration that’s a pivotal scene in The Great Believers. This month marks its 30th anniversary, and I had no idea as I worked on it how much more relevant these stories of health care battles would be by the time the article appeared.
This was the major project of my winter, and I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of anything I’ve published. That’s largely because very few of these words are my own; I’m deeply indebted to Owen Keehnen, Lori F. Cannon, William McMillan, Steve Migalski, Roberto Sanabria, Justin Hayford, Mary Patten, Jeff Edwards, Jeanne Kracher, and Saundra Johnson for their words and time and memories, as well of course as their ongoing activism. Writing this was an education in so many ways.
I hope you’ll read this (it’s empowering, I do promise) and share their words widely. Today is World Health Day; let’s keep fighting, in honor of the past and the future.
-Rebecca
I’ve recently done interviews at both The Rumpus and The Millions about The Hundred-Year House, Olympian gods, galley slaves, and what’s next. Click through to read!
The actual film world is brutal and unpredictable. But the imaginary film world is a marvelous place where I get to bring Grace Kelly back to life. You can read about my vision for THYH as a movie here — and, in a related project, you can judge for yourself whether the book passes the Page 69 Test.
Click here to read my essay for Salon about John Cheever and Mad Men!
My essay on George R. Stewart’s Ordeal by Hunger, a 1936 account of the Donner Party, is available now in Tin House #59 and online. The entire issue, focused on the theme of memory, is fabulous and worth devouring and available at indie bookstores worth their salt, and orderable from the Tin House website.
I have a new story (a memoir/short story hybrid) called “Other Types of Poison” in the July issue of Harper’s Magazine. (Part is available online, though most is behind a pay wall.) The story is complicated — not just in the telling, but in the creation as well — and I break some of it down, nervously, on The Nervous Breakdown in an interview with Davis Schneiderman. The interview includes more historical detail about my grandparents (the subjects of the story), as well as photographs of both of them, and of me as a chubby baby and scrawny kid.
In early May, I spoke to Karen Shimmin and Willy Nast of All Write Already! about the new novel, dismemberment, The Borrower, and nine-year-olds with scissors. After the intro, you can hear me read a chapter of the new book (about which I’ll have news on this site in a few days)…
