Writing a Poem as An Act of Faith: A Conversation with Yalie Saweda Kamara
Each day returning to this book teaches me something else. It teaches me about the height of my optimism.
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Rumpus Articles
What To Read When The World Is On Fire
Last year was officially the hottest year on record. Deadly wildfires tore through Maui and Canada. Orange skies hung over New York City full of smoke and ash. Extreme floods…
Let it tremble in riotous beauty: Ana Portnoy Brimmer’s To Love an Island
Our love should make us quake, quake like a storm, a storm that tears down “the whole blood-marbled edifice.”
I Had to Hold a Whole Ocean in My Hands: A Conversation with Ani Gjika
To be human means to be forever shifting with the emotions of the day, of the hour. We are never just one thing.
The Gravity of Displacement: Balsam Karam’s The Singularity
A refugee tale is always about the children, not least because they are the tellers.
Reversing Reversal: A Conversation with Lisa Olstein
I’m interested in complexity. I’m interested in the fact that very few things are simple.
Making Absurd Logic Salient: A Conversation with Alexander Sammartino
I like to think of the short novel as the thin elephant; as an artistic form, it interests me because, by definition, it exists in a state of tension.
Our Anesthetized Culture: Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld
You can probably describe your algorithmic content with a comical level of detail—the unsolicited stuff you’re targeted with each time you go online. Mine includes nail art, vegan-alternative recipes for…
Rumpus Original Fiction: Counting
It’s not the first time you do it, but it is the first time you get caught.
Black Poetics: A Conversation with Dr. Taylor Byas
We want you to learn from this book, be curious, and leave with a desire to learn more and an idea of where to go to find what you want to know.
What to Read When Falling in Love Hurts
Falling in love for the first time or millionth time—or potentially final time—is never for the faint of heart. Love is messy, reckless, changeable. Love can be unkind, selfish, gut-wrenching,…
The Man Who Swallowed a Bullet and the Woman Who Wrote About It: A Conversation with Elizabeth Gonzalez James
In the spirit of leaning into the strengths you have as a writer, I try to make setting another character when I write and try to make the picture as vivid for readers as I can.