The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Skinning the Wildcat
My son was not born my son. My son was born my daughter. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Heirlooms
The strings of our DNA mark us as one, but it’s the roots of our memories that bind us. ...more
The Life Jacket
How later you learned grief and love are partners too. How love held you through grief’s fire. ...more
HORN! REVIEWS: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Textbooks obfuscate the past, making science seem a smooth and cumulative process. ...more
The Rumpus interview with Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek discusses the forthcoming The Best Small Fictions 2016, the invisibility of anecdote, and why the art of transition is the art of the short story. ...more
The Rumpus Review of Seoul Searching
Seeing is a critical part of normalizing, and though it seems like a rudimentary expectation, it’s important for American audiences to see Korean-Americans simply living their lives. ...more
Wanted/Needed/Loved #11: Jad Fair
If you’re doing what makes you happy, it’s easier for you to be happy, and if you’re lucky, to make others happy too. ...more
A Case, Diagnosis, and Its Findings
There was nothing open about my heart; my chest tightened, threatening to implode. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Annie DeWitt
Annie DeWitt discusses her debut novel, White Nights in Split Town City, the 90s, and the brutality of nature. ...more
The Read Along #4: Jessa Crispin
Jessa Crispin on reading abroad, watching ships chug through the Bosporus, and watching Outlander. ...more
Spotlight: Jon Gant’s You & Me
Told in second-person narrative, You & Me is a nostalgic and humorous collection of observations, memories, and dreams. ...more
H.I.P. Lit and The Rumpus Present: Dark Nights, Bright Words
Celebrate literature and savor the last days of summer with "Dark Nights, Bright Words," presented by H.I.P. Lit and The Rumpus! ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Leigh Stein
Leigh Stein discusses her new memoir, Land of Enchantment, co-founding Out of the Binders, and why most of her projects begin as "an idea that someone else pushes back on." ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Losing at Memory
But I didn’t understand, then, how important memory is, for how do we know who we are without memory? How does anyone else know who we are, but for their memories of us? ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Interview with Jesse Lee Kercheval
I have learned to put myself, my ego, to one side and truly experience someone else’s poetry. ...more
Voices of Addiction #3: Mother’s Day
I will always feel a little broken. Intellectually, I know her disease is “not my fault.” But I’m her mother. I will always partially feel the blame. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Ann Packer
Ann Packer discusses her most recent novel The Children's Crusade, artistic mothers, the writer and her “first principle,” and the fight to like your own characters. ...more
Vigilantism and Orange is the New Black: The Anxiety of Injustice
When those in power stifle the voices of survivors, they find other ways of expressing their truths. ...more
Albums of Our Lives: My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade
The summer before my final year at college, my fear started to manifest as an anxiety disorder specializing in sickness and disease. ...more
Podcatcher #4: Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness
Jonathan Van Ness discusses his podcast, Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, fierceness, curiosity, and hairstyles. ...more
(K)ink #10: Writing While Deviant: Amber Dawn
What do we as writers tell each other about the intersections of trauma and desire? How do we encourage (or discourage) each other to reveal the power and tensions in those margins? ...more
Letters to Laura from a McDonald’s in Brooklyn
Tonight my loneliness is infinite and I could eat dinner or dance with my limbs wild because there is no gravity keeping me grounded. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Ranbir Singh Sidhu discusses his new novel, Deep Singh Blue, growing up in rural California, and the privileged, problematic world of publishing. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tiny Bubbles
A bubble is a sphere of privilege, but it also provides the safety to mix up more soapy water and to blow new bubbles to protect what we hold dear. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Self-Portrait with Parts Missing and/or Smeared
A first day means there was a never-day. ...more
Readers Report: Too Much, Too Soon
A collection of short pieces written by Rumpus readers pertaining to the subject of “Too Much, Too Soon.” ...more
HORN! REVIEWS: My Brilliant Friend
Since I'm nowhere near the first, let me be only the most recent to entreat you to read the story of Lenú... ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi discusses her debut novel Homegoing, growing up in Alabama, the multiplicity of black experiences, the legacy of slavery, and her writing process. ...more
You should read the New York Time’s intense and epic reporting on