ABOUT ME

Robert Rubsam is a writer, editor, and photographer in Brooklyn. Originally from New York’s Hudson Valley, he graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University in 2022. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in a variety of publications around the world, and he is the co-founder and co-host of the Interval Reading Series, an informal event series which has hosted Stegner Fellows, debut authors, first-time readers, visual artists, and more.

Selected Work

Essays

How Scribbling in the Margins Transformed My Reading — New York Times Magazine

On Dischord Records — Still Alive Magazine

On Love Songs — The Paris Review

Letter of Recommendation: Bog Bodies — New York Times Magazine

Weekending in an Emergency — The Baffler

Everyone a Cosmos — Commonweal

In Vino Historia — Roads & Kingdoms

A World Half Imaginary and Wholly on Its Own — Roads & Kingdoms

Film

On Trap and Fictional Pop Music — New York Times Magazine

The Devil, Probably: On Evil in Cinema — Mubi

Surveillance Stasis: a Dispatch from NYFF62 — Liberties

Annie Baker’s Glorious Specificity — Liberties

NYFF62 Dispatch — Commonweal

The Newest ‘Godzilla’ Film is Stranger than Fiction — New York Times Magazine

Going Underground: Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera — Mubi

Eat and Be Eaten: Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things — The Baffler

Paul Schrader’s American Carnage — The Baffler

NYFF61 Dispatch — Commonweal

Donkey Work: EO and the Cinema of Animal Suffering — The Baffler

Waiting for the Miracle: The Films of Bela Tarr — Mubi

Frozen Moments: Aftersun and the Fabelmans — Commonweal

The Iceman Cometh: Hlynur Palmason’s Godland — Artforum

White Noise Review: It Sucks — Gawker

Long Live the Old Flesh: On David Cronenberg’s Late Style — Mubi

Review of Decision to Leave — Gawker

The Anxious Pleasures of the Paranoid Thriller — Gawker

Review of Terence Davies’s Benediction — Commonweal

Keep Looking: Memoria — Commonweal

Don’t Look Up is a Disaster. Naturally — Gawker

Scott Adkins Kicks Ass — Gawker

Exquisite & Thwarted: The Cinema of Wong Kar-Wai — Commonweal

The Fugitive is the Coziest Movie — Gawker

The Cinema of Atrocity — Commonweal

Up for Grabs: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow — Commonweal

Triumph of the Small — Commonweal

Music

The Changeling: On PJ Harvey — The Baffler

Profile of Charles Bissell — Hell Gate

Profile of Balmorhea — Chron

Review of David John Morris’s Wyld Love Songs — Pitchfork

On David Bowie and Moonage Daydream — Gawker

The Many Humiliations of Arcade Fire Fandom — Gawker

Review of Pedro the Lion’s Havasu — Gawker

Will Johnson’s Steady Ascent — Texas Monthly

The Story of Lambchop in Seven Albums — Bandcamp Daily

Slowcore: A Brief Timeline — Bandcamp Daily

Interview with Jonathan Meiburg — Bandcamp Daily

How I Disappeared — Noted Music

On Listening — Noted Music

Books

I Placed My Fate in Hard Hands: The Life and Work of Else Lasker-Schüler — The Poetry Foundation

Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium — Vulture

Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo — America Magazine

Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite — The Washington Post

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s The Son of Man — Commonweal

Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s Gretel and the Great War — The Washington Post

Alvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires — Commonweal

Mauro Javier Cardenas’s American Abductions — The Washington Post

Fine Grabol’s What Kingdom — The Washington Post

Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Siren’s Lament — The Washington Post

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos — The Washington Post

On Bruno Schulz — The Washington Post

Gwendoline Riley’s Biting Realism — The Nation

On Jaroslav Hasek — The Cleveland Review of Books

Consider the Birds — Commonweal Magazine

The Return of Cormac McCarthy — America Magazine

Books That Will Lead You Down a Rabbit Hole — The Atlantic

Patterns of Meaning: Gerald Murnane’s Infinite Fictions — The Baffler

Review of John Darnielle’s Devil House — The New Republic

After Eden: The Late Fiction of Jean Giono — The Baffler

What Rapture, What Agony: On Heinrich von Kleist’s Anecdotes — Cleveland Review of Books

A World Beyond Our Skin: On The Fiction of Jenny Erpenbeck — Image Journal and Literary Hub

Jean Giono’s Mirror of the Present — America Magazine

Art

All Darkness: Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA — Commonweal

The Intimate, Private World of Vilhelm Hammershøi — FT

Nothing Gold: Klimt’s Landscapes — Commonweal

Not What, But How: Manet/Degas — Commonweal

Alone in the City: Edward Hopper’s New York — Commonweal

What Screens Can’t Show — Commonweal

Outside the Frame: Native American Art at the Met — Commonweal

Onward Buddhist Soldiers — Commonweal

The People at the Center of the World — Commonweal

Interviews and Reporting

Q&A with Sean Price Williams — Hellgate

Can Independent Music Survive Without Concerts? — InsideHook

Winter In Inishturk — Roads & Kingdoms

The Hudson Valley’s Booming Film Industry — HV Magazine

The English Channeler: A Profile of Translator Charlotte Mandell — HV Almanac

The Revitalization of the Catskills Food Scene — Eater

Profile of Joan Tower — HV Magazine

The Man Behind Thanos — HV Almanac