Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Left as Rain is Right as Rain
Maybe you’re like me: someone who loves music but is at a loss at keeping up with the frenzied pace of all this awesome new music being hurled at you. If so, do what I do and defer to those…
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In the Eye of the Hurricane
The Louisiana Skip Horack creates is both generative and broken, salvific and ruined, marked in ways large and small by Hurricane Katrina.
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My Favorite Clause: Ruminations on Stuart Dybek’s Penis
“Sauerkraut Soup” from Stuart Dybek’s 1986 debut collection Childhood and Other Neighborhoods begins with a narrator waxing philosophical on the cathartic nature of bodily purge. “Puking felt like crying,” he tells us. “At first I almost enjoyed it the way…
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Written on the Body
I’ve been in love with people who’ve had excerpts from Lord Jim scrolling up their arms, and Faunia Farley tattooed on their chest with an arrow going through a heart. It’s like you can’t escape these literary tattoos. But it…
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Morning Coffee
Dan is gone this week. I couldn’t believe it when he emailed me and asked me to fill in here. I’ve been waiting for his friendship since the first time I saw him. If anyone ever tells you you cant…
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The Cupboard
Over at <HTMLGiant>, Adam Peterson and Dave Madden talk about The Cupboard, “a quarterly pamphlet of creative prose.” “…we do really take the ‘Pamphlet’ part of our name seriously. We want to produce volumes that have that spirit, however hard…
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Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: The Rumpus Interview With Nancy Balbirer
Nancy Balbirer’s hilarious, soulful memoir about acting, Hollywood, art, fame, and misguided relationships, Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir Of Near-Fame Experiences is told from the perspective of a woman who was sure that acting would be her…
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On the Inner Workings of Book Recommendations
My housemate just sent me a link to a fascinating web site called The Book Seer. The site asks you to enter the last book you read, and then it compiles book recommendations from Amazon, BookArmy, and LibraryThing. What was interesting…
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Why Writers Should Not Run for Office
In this article about the political fortunes of writer, country singer and gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, The Guardian reminds us that if history is any indication, writers should be wary of entering politics. “Consider the case of George Bernard Shaw,…
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More Crappy News for Short Story Writers
Mark Trainer publishes an excerpt of a note he received from a “thoughtful, well-respected agent” on his blog. “I have no confidence in being able to place a collection at this time in the world of publishing. Publishers don’t like…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs have went and gone political! Maybe it’s that it’s the off year in the election cycle and they miss the rabid infighting and corruption, or maybe it’s the news that the Kindle has already become…