Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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In Praise of Confessional Poetry and Being Known: A Conversation with Sasha Debevec-McKenney
“You can go ahead and read what you want into whatever you want. That’s on you. Someone reads it and they think it’s about a particular thing, or they think it’s all true or all fake. I’m totally fine with…
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Fridays in the Year 2000
Things have been changing lately. First, a new century. Then your dad moved out.
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Distance from Trauma by Writing the Memoir Self as a Character in a Novel: A Conversation with Karen Palmer
“The thing about writing a memoir is, if you write yourself into a corner, you can only get out by telling the truth. Making something up to bridge a problem area is not available to you. With a novel, you…
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Engineering in Reverse: A Conversation with Natalie Shapero
“I did a lot of research about Monet, in the course of writing this book, and he was known in his time for having many paintings in progress simultaneously, working outdoors on a landscape canvas with a bunch of partially…
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Inquiry, Lineage, & Archive: A Review of Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home
Each line urges its own set of questions. How to reconcile being an “unplanned letter” — is this future-telling, or regret, or hope? [T]heir stone-clad letters juxtaposed against familial flesh and blood bring to mind stone’s durability across time, a…
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Something Haunted and Repeating: A Conversation with Issa Quincy
“For me, a central question of the novel as well is language and the failure of language. I think many of these people are imprisoned by language and their inability to say what they want to say or remember what…
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And the Now: on “Things in Nature Merely Grow” by Yiyun Li
“The problem: What if the tragedy has no end point? In Yiyun Li’s latest memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow, the author spurns the term “grief” and its attachment to endings. For Li, the definition of grief is tied to…
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The Femcel Catalog a.k.a. The Annals of Obsession
When you were younger, you learned how to hold your breath so you could crawl on the pool floor. Down there, the day sounded different, so you swam for as long as possible. The rising hum of water encircled you,…
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Taking Back Time: A Conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes
“It is very hard to dramatize something tiny onstage. But on the page something microscopic can contain magnitudes of consequence—not to mention time. The playwright’s basic unit is time. You’ll have two hours of the audience’s time. You are forcing…
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The Rumpus: Redesigned
When Debbie Millman and I decided to buy The Rumpus, one of the first things we wanted to do was redesign the website which was great but due for a refresh. For the past several months, we have worked with…
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On Nature Writing, Growing up an Indoor Kid, and Walmart as Landscape
We see the world through high resolution filters. Brands become our chaperones to exotic landscapes. Never mind the break in aesthetic—the golden arches pop-up along the interstate while driving through Death Valley like the sudden appearance of a roadside oasis.…
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Shredding the Crazy Cat Lady Stereotype: A Mini Interview with Rebecca van Laer
“I think fiction feels safer. If I’m writing a short story, I don’t usually call up my friend and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about putting this line you said in there.” There was initially a scene from my life that…