That’s what we authors are always working for, that personal connection with the reader. It’s what makes all the unpaid hours, mostly spent blogging for a book deal, worthwhile.

“I really believe that most writers in America have taken on this idea that we’re never going to get paid–and so we accept so little for what we do, when what we do is so valuable. And it’s wanted.” –Ali Liebegott

At first, I loved Dan from a distance. Judging on a bell-curve, I was attractive for my high school debate team, but otherwise, I was far from his type of girl. And yet, that one day on the quad, he saw me, sat next to me, picked me. Few get to date that one person they [...]

I live down the street from a real life celebrity: not one of those fake celebrities who’s won a Nobel Prize or appeared in the local newspaper because she raised money for cancer awareness or bad complexion. This person is a real star, someone who has a job being famous all the time.

My theory of the tortured artist is to be an artist, you don’t have to be tortured. But it helps. I am in graduate school. Because I have nothing better to do, I wanted to prove my thesis. As research I observed some people and asked some questions about drinking and drugs and art. All of the [...]

Meet Felicity! After the 2770 Rebellion of the Virginias, all of America (including American Swaziland) is controlled by the reanimated head of Senator Robert C. Byrd. Felicity thinks this is wrong, but how can she maintain her convictions when her grandpa, a political crony of Byrd’s, and her white supremacist friend Emily think differently?

“I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.” – Marina Abramovic

I’m sorry. It may be wrong to judge people based on their ideas and expectations, but I just wouldn’t date a magician.

First, you and your grandmother decorate Easter eggs to put on the Seder plate. This is her Passover tradition. She will have decided that Seder plates “could use a little more color.” More often than not, she will also be drunk.

Kayla James, Age 5 Bellingham, Washington “He had a lot of cool toys, and I really liked the toys.”

INGREDIENTS: A 200-year-old stone farmhouse in which every room is painted a different color, and the maid opens the shutters at dawn.

Submission Guidelines by Jane Roper Dear Writer: Thank you for your interest in our publication.

Dear Professor Julie Abraham, It’s midnight, and I have to tell you about The Death of the Heart, and how Elizabeth Bowen is clever, and tragic, all at the same time. You’ll notice this isn’t the reflection paper you assigned re: the queer interpretation of Virgina Woolf’s texts (due today) and is instead a letter [...]

“Then you’ve got Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. He was handsome too and his eye patch debonair. He was in the German Army High Command, fought under Rommel and did lots of brave things.”

First, abandon everyone you know and love. Say goodbye to friends, lovers, would-be lovers, American cheese, and sanity. You don’t need these things in San Francisco. You need isolation. You need Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. You need Saturday nights writing in your blog. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters. [...]

Dumitru Tsepeneag is a Romanian novelist, essayist and one of the founders of the Romanian Oniric literary movement. Established in the mid-60s, the Oniric group was inspired by surrealism and built an aesthetic platform centered on dreams. As one of the only Romanian counter-cultural literary movements at that time, the Oniric Group was largely suppressed. [...]

1. Don’t expect any warm up. Jon Stewart comes into the green room before the show and chats with you for about 3 minutes.

ACT ONE Scene: DEREK*, is in his early thirties with a military haircut, moderately toned flab, and tinted eyeglasses. He grabs the 50-pound barbells from the weight room rack and groans awkwardly

Sasa Stanisic was born in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and lived there until 1992, at which point his family fled the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. He currently resides in Germany. How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2008), Stanisic’s first book, is a self-portrait of a precociously creative young boy as he wades through the ugly [...]

Kathleen Alcott: Where is the Internet? Jeeves: Hi, Kathleen. Thanks for writing. Perhaps I’ll answer your question with a question of my own: Where the hell have you been?

In March of 2009, I wrote to Elaine Showalter on behalf of The Rumpus, saying she inspired me as a writer, editor, and feminist. She agreed to an interview, the focus of which would be her latest book, A Jury of Her Peers. Ranging from the instigators to contemporary innovators, Jury is the first (yeah, [...]

77%* of Americans say they believe in angels. That doesn’t mean we like them. Sure, they were cute–at first. Maybe you thought you’d never get tired of those sweet rosy faces and chubby behinds. But now…

Born in the former Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dubravka Ugresic began her career writing children’s television programs and books. In nearly four decades of writing and editing, she has published books on Russian contemporary fiction, edited anthologies of Russian avant-garde writing, translated texts into Croatian, written more than half a dozen books and published countless articles [...]

It happens in all our lives. We put down our golf clubs to peruse the mail that the butler has brought on a silver tray, when we discover an invitation to a beheading. Naturally, our minds turn to deeper thoughts: how should we behave, who should we bring, and what should we wear? As I’ve [...]

“For me writing is indeed very close to collection, but it is not a process of collection, much rather a way for cataloging your collection.”

Dear Future Dads, So, you’re expecting a baby (by “expecting” I mean “dreading,” and by “a baby,” I mean “the consequences of using that glow-in-the-dark condom from 1989”)! That’s wonderful!

The Rumpus presents the second installment of an index to “The Last Book I Loved” Series.

God, he was smart! He had a mind like a hummingbird, he had read every book there was to read, his tongue was sharp, he was funnier than anyone else at the party.

The year I met Steve Almond was also the year I picked up (Not That You Asked) and the year I read his gorgeous homage to Kurt Vonnegut, “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.”

My husband enjoys scuba diving. Prior to meeting my present spouse, I had never entertained the notion of going diving, as it combines three things I generally try to avoid: doing equations, wearing a rubber bodysuit, and drowning.