Rural Art Hero
Thesley Beverly is the art czar, and maybe the heart and soul, of Pembroke, Illinois, population 2800.
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
Get Clean Coal
Reality‘s latest ad in their campaign against the coal industry comes from the same folks who brought you The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, and Fargo,…
Pixelated God: Faith in the Internet
“We are all products in the marketplace. Everything we consume is a product. We consume and are consumed. We are products that produce.”
Gender-Specific Sins
Survey based on Catholic confessions found that the most common sin for women was pride (followed by envy and anger), while the most common sin for men was lust (followed…
I Hate to Make My Bed
In A Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter chronicles the history of female American writers, from captivity narratives to Annie Proulx. Salon calls her “the woman for the job” due…
The Greatest Marketing Campaign Ever
Paging all 1990s hard rock fan-girls, Josh Freese is yours…for a price. The drumming genius, who has been a member of The Vandals, Devo, and A Perfect Circle, in addition…
The Shorty Q & A with Rodes Fishburne
The hero of Rodes Fishburne’s first novel, Going to See the Elephant, comes to San Francisco with only a trunk full of first-edition19th-century novels and an equally heavy load of…
IKEA Ninjas
The art of hiding in plain sight, a ninja skill and military staple, was tailored for average pedestrians a little over a year ago by Japanese clothing designer Aya Tsukioka…
Kerouac Joins Crew of Novelists
Publishers Marketplace reports that Harpers has agreed to publish “The Sea is My Brother,” a “lost” novel by Jack Kerouac, written in 1942 and based on his experiences in the…
Fifteen Thousand Pages in Three Minutes
Roberto Bolaño’s überbook inspires a speed-read through literary history.
The Rumpus Interview with Michael Showalter
“I am writing an ‘important’ memoir about not being able to write an important memoir. It winds up being kind of a novel-length comedic essay on insecurity and procrastination.”
Lost in Space
For Mary Miller’s characters, the world is anything but big. These are women trapped in little towns and little lives, but the emotional resonance is limitless.