Saying What Shouldn’t Be Said: A Conversation with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, why writing about teenage girls is the most serious thing in the world, and finding truths in fiction. ...more
Posts Tagged: addiction
A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that. ...more
Songs of Our Lives: Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
There’s you and him, and you and me. You seem to want each of us all to yourself, and that’s fine; you’re the one we both care about. ...more
Voices on Addiction: Twenty-Five
I know that there are those who would argue that alcoholism is a singularly extreme condition, and I get that, but I’ve always felt clear that there’s a lot of overlap between alcoholism and plain old ordinary humanity. ...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Buntin
Julie Buntin discusses her debut novel, Marlena, the writers and books that influenced it, tackling addiction with compassion, and the magic of teenage girls. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: My Souls Are Out A-Wandering
What is marriage but another form of colonization? A renaming? A power taken, a power taken away? ...more
Voices on Addiction: Dynamite
The world is a merry-go-round, a sawed-off shotgun, a ticker tape. There's no struggle now. There's only darkness, breathlessness, exit— ...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #23: The Love Song for Argyle C. Klopnik
File this one under “they can’t Trump everything; life goes on.”
Last week, I got caught up in reflections on poverty in America: mine, yours, and ours. This week, I decided to do something about it and buckle down to design a careful budget.
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #22: Poverty Is Never “Genteel”
Poverty may have been beloved of St. Francis, but not so much by the rest of us. Nobody likes to look at advanced poverty, toothless and drooling, clutching the hands of children who have running sores on their filthy legs. Poverty is a crackhead who pisses on the pavement, and sleeps with fleas and stray dogs.
...more
My Life with Annie Lennox: Nostalgia
I don’t use the term “lifelong hero” frivolously. There are a lot of people I respect and wish to emulate; Annie Lennox, however, is the only “lifelong hero” I’ll ever have. I need her. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr discusses his memoir Sirens, writing for his daughter, and why he values art that trusts its audience. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses Abandon Me, confessional writing, Billie Holiday, reenacting trauma, cataloguing narratives, and searching for identity. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Daddy Issues
What I’m saying is I was a fucking wreck and it’s not my dad’s fault. ...more
Voices on Addiction: A Bad Night
Trying to protect him from himself is like trying to protect atmosphere from weather. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jade Sharma
Jade Sharma discusses her first novel Problems, the complicated feelings that came with debuting to rave reviews, and her writing and editing processes. ...more
Womanly Arts
This is the hearth. This is the knot. This is home. The woman bent over a sewing machine, the steady hum of the motor, the needle rising and sinking. ...more
The Truth About Lying
My gut is a red, fiery drum, a beacon of rosy light. My instinct to run is a bright radioactive pink arrow, a bloody blade. I was correct. ...more
This Week in Books: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice.
...more
The Alienation of an Irish Abortion
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Laura Albert
Laura Albert discusses her alter ego JT LeRoy, Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story, her complicated relationship with her mother, and life as a hustler. ...more
Voices on Addiction: The Only Thing That Has to Change Is Everything
The word rehab is short for rehabilitate, which means to restore to a former capacity. Like houses, I remember thinking. Demo the kitchen. Tear down the walls. ...more
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Ian Svenonius’s “Principles of Modernism”
[T]he most essential thing is actually a kind of worldview, a mindset—or maybe it’s an ideology. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Ladies Lazarus
For Mother, two worlds—earth we inhabit together, then the hot, heavenly body of euphoria and speed. Often, Mother exists in the tear between these worlds, belonging nowhere, to no one. ...more
What We Lost: Undoing the Fairy Tale Narrative of Adoption
The singular, unavoidable truth about adoption is that it requires the undoing of one family so that another one can come into being. ...more
Voices on Addiction: 365 Days without You
The men in my family don’t live long, you foretold. Damn you. Drunks and rock stars don’t grow up. ...more
The Night Faerie
We were all free-falling, and there was no one, nothing, to catch us. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Wendy C. Ortiz
Wendy C. Ortiz discusses her new book Bruja, what a "dreamoire" is, the magic all around us, and why she loves indices—and cats. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from. ...more
Missing Lorraine
I guess I was somewhat relieved that my aunt realized she wouldn’t survive another day in her apartment, and I cautiously believed that she did want to live, at least for the next ninety days. ...more
Voices on Addiction: Surrender
Somewhere along the way, the salty fresh sea breezes of the beach are replaced by the drier, more metallic air of my mother’s neighborhood. It might as well be a different continent. ...more
