The Burden of Being Real: Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special
To see oneself and one’s people as real: this is the only way out of the shadow of the special.
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
The In-Between-ness of Things: An Interview with David Groff
What would it mean to embrace being generative? To have a different way of taking on a responsibility for creating more life on the planet?
From the Archives: FUNNY WOMEN #61: My Imaginary Wet Hot American Summer
Shwayder Camp, Idaho Springs, 1997. This summer has been—without rival—the best summer of my life. Life, I am sure, will continue on this trajectory.
Twenty-five Years Unbound: Reading a Book of AIDS
The range of prepositions used here in writing about how to write AIDS is indicative of the range of questions encompassed by the book, the range of the “brutal presence” of the disease.
Inherent Violence: A Conversation with Rita Chang-Eppig
I knew I wanted to be deliberately vague, as to whether something was actually happening. For many people across the world and across time periods, there isn’t always this strong delineation between fantasy and reality.
Animal Rescue
The morning I found Gaspard and Vincent, I had just visited the punk house where the ex boyfriend had been staying. He had some things of mine that I couldn’t let him keep . . .
On abandoning words: Carlos Fonseca’s Austral
Hidden within all these constellations and labyrinths of philosophy is a love story and a story about the struggle of a writer to find meaning in words.
From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: The Anniversary
There lay her gift, basking in the sunlight. A gray-green lizard the size of a shoe. It stood so still she thought it was fake.
The World is a Shitting Bird: A Conversation with Emilie Moorhouse
She mocked beauty standards and even the condescending tone they had when advising women on how to behave “nicely.” So she obviously did have certain strong leanings.
The Presence in Absences: A Conversation with Gina Chung
The only way you can care for your art is to care for yourself.
Voices on Addiction: Anchor Point
At first, sobriety feels at once like a death of a best friend, loss of comfort, and a beloved version of one’s self. On some level, it is exactly these things . . .