The Loose Borders of Genre: A Conversation with Kyle Winkler
I would suggest making friends with a horror writer, if nothing else.
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
On Living Dangerously: Lyta Gold’s Dangerous Fictions
We are once again living through an age when this fight over the purpose of storytelling, whose stories deserve to be heard, and how freely ideas should circulate is heated.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Application for Admission [DRAFFFFT] from Kaylee River King
Dear Committee, Please consider my application for admission under your new Charles Schwab Playing Field Initiative, which I believe I qualify for in double spades.
“The Force That Shapes Us”: A Conversation with Kenzie Allen
There will always be something new waiting to be found.
Immigrant Experience as an Oedipal War of Words in Porochista Khakpour’s Sons and Other Flammable Objects
Words that do not match their peers or adhere to linguistic rules and expectations are the driving trope for the discordance of the immigrant experience in this novel.
Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Iqra Khan
here/ my uncle is in service of thirty-three / guava trees/ he asks us to gather what the storm / has coaxed to the ground
Seduced from Line to Line: A Conversation with Christian J. Collier
I want the work to sing on the page and, if someone were to read it aloud, sing as it exists in the air.
Voices on Addiction: Badfish, Don’t Bother Me
Probably, then and there on the wraparound porch, I should have known to turn around, should have left it all to someone else—the missing key an omen. But I was always going to find it.
A Lot of Other Women
One night, lazing on her grownup bed, Miri laughs about a girl in the year above.
“A Game of Chance You Can Choose to Play or Not”: On Lauren Russell’s A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close
[Russell] creates breathing room by breaking genre expectations, so that everything invisible swoops into stark relief.
“We are so often strangers to ourselves”: A Conversation with Jordan Windholz
There is only so much you can tell your children about the reality of the world. So, to navigate that necessary withholding, we tell stories.
What to Read When You Want to be Stirred
I like books that mean something in and outside of their own narratives, impacting my worldview. The stirring can be felt in beautiful writing, or powerful concepts, deep analysis, or emotion that resonates off the page.