The Rumpus

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Comics

Which House

What to Read When

What To Read When It’s Dangerous To Be A Girl

Fairy tales and myths are one of the oldest ways to say what’s true. When the news (the world) (the woods) is overwhelming, I reach for stories that seek to tap into that history

Essays

Human Error Is the Point: On Teaching College During the Rise of AI

My syllabus is a mess of half-remembered intentions. I re-use icebreakers that I know don’t work. I forget to grade the first assignment until Week Four. I write emails that begin with “So sorry for the delay!” and I mean it. I use “This reminded me of something I once read—” as a stall…

Interviews

Let there / be night: A Conversation with Kevin Young about “Night Watch”

The book as a whole is interested in the finding as much as the knowing and the discoveries of grief, but also of survival, and ends with a kind of paradise. I guess it’s interested in not just the underworld, but in a kind of afterlife that might be something to think about, and aspire to,…

The First Book

Labor and Trauma in the American Workplace: A Conversation with Elaine Castillo

“A lot of people think financial ruin looks like Dickensian destitution. But for many Americans, what it looks like is a never-ending credit card debt. Financial illiteracy can look very luxurious. But the way American fiction describes material possessions, and depicts materialistic desires…

Essays

Transubstantiations

I study artworks made for the cells and dining spaces in nunneries, paintings whose colors have lost their pigment, faded with age and decay, the gold leaf flecked with brown stains. A problem distracts, however: I haven’t stopped bleeding in three months. It starts in July, just as the new…

Interviews

Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, on his Debut Short Story Collection, “An Oral History of Atlantis”

Pale Fire in particular I find genuinely hilarious, and thinking about “Note” now, it reads like a minor variation on that novel’s schema, with the original creator getting in the last word

Essays

Be Clean, Be Loved

Recently, I asked my mother what she would purchase with the prize money if she won the lottery: new dishwasher, she said, or facelift. When she reminds me they do not make them the way they used to, it is unclear whether she means the dishwasher or our bodies.

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Featured

Comics

Double Grief

Long-term Art Project

Fragments

more comics

Essays

To Adopt a Grandparent

Home is a Word Unspoken

Pigs Rooting for Truffles

more Essays

Letters in the Mail from Authors!

Receive letters with creative prompts from some of our favorite authors written just for Rumpus readers and sent straight into your (snail) mailbox 2 x a month!

Fiction

Rumpus Original Fiction: Casserole

Rumpus Original Fiction: The Sun Never Sets on the Sunrise Highway

Rumpus Original Fiction: Twinsies

More Fiction

What to Read When

What to Read When You Can’t Catch a Break

What to Read When You’re Looking for Romance

What to Read When You’re a True Believer

More Lists

Poetry

Rumpus Original Poetry: Katherine Tunning

Sacred Mire and the Cutting Edge of Anti-: Tawahum Bige’s Cut to Fortress

National Poetry Month: Hala Alyan

More Poetry

Columns

ENOUGH: The Last Beautiful Day

Funny Women: Advice for Midlife Lady Writers

We Are More: Istanbul

More Columns

Reviews

“Three Initiates”: On Jeanne Thornton’s A/S/L

Little by Little: Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia

We Must All Transition: Paul B. Preciado’s Dysphoria Mundi

More Reviews

Interviews

The First Book: Veena Dinavahi

The Tightrope Walk of Making Comics: A Conversation with María Medem

The Gifts of a Father’s Schizophrenia: A Conversation with Natasha Williams

More Interviews

Even more Rumpus

Letters in the mail (from authors)

Receive letters from some of our favorite authors written just for Rumpus readers and sent straight into your (snail) mailbox 2 x a month!

Become a Member!

Become a MONTHLY or ANNUAL RUMPUS MEMBER and receive exclusive content, editorial insights, merch discounts, and more! Annual Members also receive access to submit their work year-round outside of our regular no-fee reading periods. Be a part of building a better Rumpus!

Join today!