Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
-
Turmeric, Nine Ways
The first stomachaches grip me tightest at night. I watch the sliver under my bedroom door, waiting for Amma’s feet, for her hand on the ache. When I hear a sound that could be the snap of a suitcase or…
-
“Adolescence as Hallucination” and Eschewing Autofiction: A Conversation with Chris Kraus
“I’ve never seen my novels as being about me. Catt is my avatar but I’m writing about the things, people, themes, and histories that are close and important to me, the things I know most intimately. I really can’t write…
-
To the Letter: A Conversation with Virgina Evans
“ I wanted the story to be a tight ball of yarn even though there were a million strands. It had to be tight to keep a reader’s interest, so there was an element of looping back almost like a…
-
Embracing Constraint through the Expansion of Going Deeper: A Conversation with Tayyba Kanwal
“I think “escape” does work in that we all need to escape our constraints. How we escape them is the question. Do you escape by breaking down the structures? Or do you escape control by finding ways to accomplish what…
-
When I Die and Go To Hell
Even before her Alzheimer’s, my mother could only remember punchlines, no idea the rest of the joke.
-
Rumpus Original Fiction: One of the Good Ones
When I first met Matteo—that is, when we were both eight years old—I had the habit of falling madly in love with anyone who shared a desk with me. A boy would ask to borrow a sheet of notebook paper,…
-
Procrastistitching and Learning Who You Are
This little collection of essays made me want to sew. And knit. And do a bit of embroidery. It made me want to slow down, and create the world I want to live in.
-
Confronting Fear with Poetry: A Conversation with Tracy K. Smith
“Poems allow me to work toward momentary clarity or to see a problem through a metaphor that makes it something I can work upon or live with in a way that always feels like a blessing or some kind of…
-
Rumpus Original Fiction: Rabbit & Ox
It was Keefe’s first run since the wildfires, a week after an orange glow of an apocalyptic sky had greeted them one morning. Day 182, though she had stopped marking the calendar in Sharpie at Day 122, too depressed to…
-
Welcome To The Party: A Conversation With Saeed Jones
“So I have deep empathy for people who are shook, whether because they’re young or they just haven’t been especially into politics until fairly recently. I get that, I really do. But it’s important to channel that initial shocked panic.…
