Looking for Trouble: A Conversation with Maud Newton
Are these stories true? Did my great grandfather really kill someone with a hay hook? Was my other great grandfather really a communist?
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Rumpus Articles
The Scent of Man: Cameron MacKenzie’s River Weather
That I find these characters sympathetic, that I wish them whole while assuming they will never be: This is the beauty and frustration MacKenzie has so elegantly combined. It is easy to hate these men, but I have loved them.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Inheritance
When she was seven years old, Lottie killed her first rattlesnake. As long as she could remember, her grandfather had instilled in her that The Good Californian killed the rattlesnake, spared those behind him the danger of snakebite, the venom sapped from their future. She thought it was allegory until she came face-to-Western-face with a Mojave rattlesnake in the scrub out by the foothills.
Doomscrolling in Novel Form: A Conversation with John Elizabeth Stintzi
You'll really love this book if you have the opinion that reality is weird. And if you think, like me, that the fact that so many people believe that there’s even a steady thing that we could call reality is fucking insane. If that's who you are, this book is definitely for you.
Voices on Addiction: Nineteen
You'll look back and you'll think the scars seem almost invisible, like maybe they'll be gone one day. But then you'll realize you're just looking at the smaller ones, and yes, the bigger one is still right there.
What to Read When You Want to Be a Patch of Moss
There is pleasure in being seen and there is pleasure in disappearing. Wade in to the swamp, pull out a book, wipe off the slime and sit on the edge to become invisible.
Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Alex Jane Cope
To speak of the shame is to speak of him / and his bed of lichen and his green / ribbon fastened around my throat.
“Yes” as Signature and Grounding: Hannah Emerson’s The Kissing of Kissing
In this experience of oneness . . . Emerson invites comparisons to mystic poets. And like them, Emerson breaks from her singular experience to take on some of life’s biggest questions: What does it mean to be human? Why do we exist?
Witches, Mushrooms, Collective Voices, and Catalan: A Conversation with Irene Solà and Mara Faye Lethem
Remember the little green dolls in Toy Story that live in a vending machine, the claw is their god and they go “The Claw!” and cower away? I imagined the mushrooms in the same way, except their claw is the rain.
Cure for Last Night’s Leftovers
Let’s be clear: There is no hangover cure. Anyone who claims to have never had a hangover is either a) a liar, b) a teetotaler, or c) a responsible drinker. I’m none of those things, most days, despite effort, and the number of times I’ve searched for “how to cure a hangover” in the harsh light of a weekend morning is embarrassing the older I get, so manage your expectations.
A Guidebook for Liminal Times: Martin Shaw’s Smoke Hole
These are liminal times. You must have this book at your side.
Solace in Writing About the End of the World: An Interview with Mike Meginnis
The most beautiful thing I can think of to do with one’s life is to write a novel, even as I feel really ambivalent about the utility of doing it, about the value to myself and to society and to my local community of having written a book.