Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Leaving Paradise
I moved to New York for an ideaanimated by imagery:red and yellow leaves, snow, and lots of walking.Blue mittens and bloated coatsresembling pastry. And then six months later:bare shoulders, grass roaring with bugs.On my last Sunday in California, I stood…
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What Is Freedom?
This year, 2026, is the 250th anniversary of American independence. This 4th of July will be a bombastic celebration of an independence that came at an unbearably high cost for the original stewards of this land. We cannot surrender to…
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Untying the Silence: A Conversation with Davin Malasarn
“The characters in this book often serve as stand-ins for my family members. I forgave Kamron, and that helped me forgive my father. Or maybe it was the other way around–maybe in the writing process I forgave my father and…
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Under Surveillance: Benjamin H. Snyder’s Spy Plane
Righteous Black rage spilled over the borders into the downtown Inner Harbor. The cover of TIME magazine showed a mob of cops in riot gear chasing a young Black person down the street in front of Oriole Park. It was…
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Three Poems
*** *** it is finally spring & i am tending your garden& you are gone. it is unfair of deathto ask so many necessary questions,then to pry the answers from uslike warped wood bending away from itself.you are gone &…
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On First Loves, Writing Latinx Characters, and Grieving in Paradise: A Conversation with Mario Elías
“I wanted to create an honest depiction of the world as I knew it growing up. I needed to be honest in how the food smelled, in how the music playing vibrated everything around it, in how the specific rhythm…
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A Little Machine Against Big Brother: A Conversation with Glenn Dixon
“At any rate, we have to find a way to infuse empathy into these AI models. And that’s where we come to my novel. I don’t know if I was thinking of this in writing the novel—I was slogging through…
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Sunday Scaries: Lu’s Laundry and Other Services
Some prospectors’ ghosts leave their previous clothes real easy. My laundry shop was just a railway station on their way to the afterlife.
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Two Poems
BEFORE THE AFTERLIFE Early in our love,we sit in the Swan Room,ceilings high as a tomb,blood-heavy curtains,clusters of moon lamps.Fake swans lurkeverywhere. Overdirty martinis, cloudy vialsof brine, we revealour death plans:ashes for both.Water, I say,my body scatteredinto sea or fjord.It…
