Gabriel James Bump Journalist Profile

Articles

Aaron Robertson’s ‘Black Utopians,’ an extraordinary work of history and memoir

Oct 11, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Gabriel James Bump

BooksBook ReviewsFictionNonfictionSummer reading BooksBook ReviewsFictionNonfictionSummer reading Aaron Robertson’s book mines the tension between “running from hell” and “racing toward paradise,” and finds beauty in seemingly impossible dreams (Illustration by Kingsley Nebechi for The Washington Post) 11 min Review by Gabriel Bump October 11, 2024 at 12:18 p.m. EDT Early in Aaron Robertson’s extraordinary new work of history and memoir, “The Black Utopians,” he writes about one of his...
Carl Rojas Translates Chinese Luminary Yan Lianke’s Words—and His Warnings About Authoritarianism

Aug 19, 2024 | indyweek.com | Gabriel James Bump

Most people, in their off hours, enjoy hobbies like knitting, hiking, drinking, or scrolling their phones. Durham’s Carlos Rojas, in his spare time, translates Yan Lianke, China’s perennial Nobel Prize hopeful, into English. “I started doing Chinese because I wanted to do literary research,” Rojas says from a busy café in Barcelona, on vacation before the semester starts. “I was doing comparative literature. My father was an academic who was both a literature scholar and an author.
Ernest J Gaines Award Winners

Jul 11, 2024 | barnesandnoble.com | Isabelle McConville |Aaliyah Bilal |Nathan Harris |Gabriel James Bump

Now in its 17th year, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “honors Louisiana’s revered storyteller, Ernest J. Gaines, and serves to inspire and recognize rising African-American fiction writers of excellence at a national level.” One of the biggest writing awards and highest literary honors, this award serves to support up-and-coming African-American authors and grow their readership through increased visibility.
'Neighbors and Other Stories,' by Diane Oliver.

Jun 26, 2024 | indyweek.com | Gabriel James Bump

Diane Oliver: Neighbors and Other Stories | Reissued by Grove Press; Jan. 2024The tragedy is obvious. Twenty-two-year-old Diane Oliver, from Charlotte, educated at the North Carolina Women’s College (UNC-Greensboro), a prodigious talent at the famed University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966, just days before her graduation. Her posthumous short-story collection, Neighbors and Other Stories, released this past February by Grove Press, is an extended eulogy.
Gabriel Bump, Author at INDY Week

Jun 26, 2024 | indyweek.com | Gabriel James Bump

Skip to content Posted inArts & Culture Oliver died in a motorcycle accident in 1966, just days before her graduation from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Now reissued, the moral clarity in her experimental stories live on today.
A Year in Reading: Gabriel Bump

Dec 20, 2023 | themillions.com | Gabriel James Bump

This was a sad year, then a calm year, then a happy year, then a stressful year, then, now, again, returned to happiness. A first year of marriage. A grief year. A loving year. Mostly, surprisingly, still, a fun year. It was a big year filled with big books. Let’s go back to January. I started with Fantasy. My wife and I experienced a few tragedies in the first months. Back-to-back. I wanted to escape into a different world for a few hours a day.
A Year in Reading: Gabriel Bump

Dec 20, 2023 | everand.com | Gabriel James Bump

This was a sad year, then a calm year, then a happy year, then a stressful year, then, now, again, returned to happiness. A first year of marriage. A grief year. A loving year. Mostly, surprisingly, still, a fun year. It was a big year filled with big books. I recently re-started by , with’s You don’t want to hear about that.
A Review of Water Made Us

Dec 13, 2023 | thebeliever.net | Gabriel James Bump

Five tracks into Jamila Woods’s third studio album, Water Made Us, halfway through “Send a Dove,” the synthetic beat fades and Woods pleads, “Don’t raise your voice at me. / I’ll flinch like it’s a fist. / You’re so quick to rage. / You know I hate to fear you.”The song reveals all Woods’s talents as a singer, songwriter, and storyteller: profundity through vulnerability, spirituality, bop-ability, a swaying cadence that lifts the listener toward epiphany.
My favorite books of 2023

Dec 4, 2023 | adamm0rgan.substack.com | Mariana Enríquez |Gabriel James Bump |Adam Morgan

I didn’t read half as many books as I wanted to this year (or ever), but of the ones I did, here are my personal favorites. I also didn’t read as much poetry as I usually do thanks to professional obligations to read a lot of prose, so you’ll just have to forgive me. What were your favorites? Let me know!(Note: Your email client might cut off the bottom of this issue, since it’s long and full of cover art. If it does, just click “view full message.”)Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez.
Rereading My Words in the Midst of Profound Grief

Dec 4, 2023 | lithub.com | Gabriel James Bump

When finishing a novel, there is an introspective sweet spot before publication and after the final edits get turned in, when, in a quiet anxious period, I’m forced to look at my creation, to try and understand what I have done, to remember how this thing was formed. An important question for any journey: what do I think, now that it’s over?