The Zinophile: Charting Washington’s Geography with Joseph Riippi

Joseph Riippi’s emotionally searing writing serves as an exhaustive overview of whatever subject he chooses to write about. In Because, that subject was himself. In the chapbook Puyallup, Washington: An Interrogation, out now on Publishing Genius, his subject is the city of the title. Throughout, Riippi delves into the city’s occasionally improbable history, along with its precarious location. I checked in with Riippi via email to learn more about the chapbook’s origins and its connection to his other recent work.

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#tobyreads: The Plot & The Echoes of Life

It’s been kind of a weird week, as reading goes. There’ve been a few terrific books that I’ve read in the past few days that I’m probably not going to talk about quite yet, but that you will see me writing about in the coming weeks and months. (The authors of those? Jen Doll, Norman Lock, and Scott Cheshire.) But this week has also seen plenty of other reading, some of which has been very plot-heavy; others of which has […]

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Haunted Memories and Fractured Families: A Profile of Joseph Riippi

Looking at Joseph Riippi — 6″4, wild hair, hands that eat mine in a handshake and a imposing presence — you would never suspect the sensitive, tender writing that flows from his prodigious mind. Given all of our collective wisdom I should know by now not to conflate the physical and the emotional, I should be aware of the discrepancy between our physicality, largely unchosen, bestowed, and our interior worlds molded by our choices, our experiences, and the choices of […]

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