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Join NOW!Goodbye Borders. The fraught corporation is emptying its stores across the country, finishing up the initial liquidation process that began earlier this year. Read how the disconnect between workers and management, and Borders’ attempt to stop employees from unionizing, led to its ultimate demise. We hope that small, independently-owned bookstores will come to the forefront […]
...moreSome Mexican politicians and public officials–in addition to a significant portion of the Mexican public–believe that it is “time to go back to a policy of peaceful co-existence with the cartels”. With the death toll perpetually on the rise (around 3,000 deaths in 2007 to almost 20,000 in 2010), people are starting to question whether […]
...moreTwo young adult males–Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22–both just received four-year sentences for using Facebook to incite a riot in their Cheshire hometown that never happened. Despite the announcement over Facebook concerning the riots that were purportedly going to occur, no one showed up to these locations apart from the police. The riot […]
...moreCaio Barros, a Brazilian student at the State University of São Paulo, has uploaded an astounding collection of nearly 500 tracks of electronic music from 1937-2001. These tracks, from a 62 CD set called “The History of Electroacoustic Music,” were floating around as on the web as a torrent that seems to have been lost. […]
...moreLondon is definitely a hot case right now. But once you start taking a look elsewhere, you’ll see that the UK is not the only country where riots are taking form. Student protests in Chile have been gaining momentum for the past several months. Students, teachers, and others who support the cause have been “staging […]
...moreHundreds will gather later this month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to set a new world record for the longest reading chain. You may be asking yourself, what is a reading chain? Well, let me fill you in. A reading chain is when a group of people gather in one location to read aloud […]
...morePhilip Levine, at 83 years old, has been named the Poet Laureate for 2011-2012. As a former autoworker from Detroit, his poetry draws largely on his working-class Jewish background. Deemed “America’s most acclaimed working-class poet,” his work expresses the “simple truths” of everyday life in post-industrial America.
...moreHow many postcards have you written (or received) this summer? This minimal art form, caught up in our hyper-digital world of e-mail, facebook, and cell phones, seems to be slowly but surely disappearing. Read Charles Simic’s reflections on this “lost art”; maybe it will inspire you to send some snail mail the next time you embark […]
...moreThis beautifully and eloquently written piece by Elizabeth Bachner explores the ways in which we feel and conceptualize the human emotion of humiliation. What is humiliation exactly, and how does it play such a crucial role in literature and in our lives? How do we purge of such an emotion through the act of writing […]
...moreAre you a part of the Rumpus book club? Remember last month’s book, Christopher Boucher’s debut novel How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive? Well, it‘s starting to get great reviews out there. This post on The Millions has referred to the novel as “a surrealist’s guide” full of strange, dazzling, yet heartwarming prose that seems to pleasantly […]
...moreRumpus contributor Laura Goode, (the most recent contribution being “Albums of Our Lives: Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black”), has just published her first novel. Kudos! Sister Mischief, in which a “gay suburban hip-hopper freaks out her Christian high school–and falls in love–in this righteously funny and totally tender YA debut, for real,” is described by […]
...moreReflecting, reminiscing, wondering, asking. Jimmy Chen’s beautifully personal essay on HTML Giant, “Notes Toward a Suicide Letter”, explores suicide from multiple standpoints. Whether writing about a loved one or Kurt Cobain or Ernest Hemingway, Chen finds a way to express the infallibility of the darkest, yet most human, feelings and thoughts.
...moreRadiohead has just released a remix series of their latest album, King of Limbs (2011). The band has commissioned some of their favorite contemporary artists to remix tracks from the album, which are now being released every couple of weeks in record stores on limited edition 12″ vinyl, or in MP3 format online on the […]
...moreBlue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work is an anthology of short stories edited by Richard Ford that chronicle the ways in which our jobs–what we “do”–is inextricably intertwined with how we define ourselves–who we “are”. This collection of stories leads us through a literary realm in which we can consider the “hazy […]
...moreWith the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) due for publication in May 2013, the classification of mental disorders and the categorization of psychiatric definitions is yet again being reviewed, revised, and reworded. Many of us may be asking ourselves, “does changing the label we use […]
...moreOftentimes an author’s most popular work is not actually his or her best, qualitatively speaking. What about those other under-the-radar books that don’t seem to get to get credit where credit’s due? Joseph Heller wrote other books beside Catch-22, right? Learn about the books that we should be familiar with, but aren’t.
...moreHow do you pump up before a game? Cheer? Chant? Talk some smack to the rival team? Or…do you read poetry? Bruno Biri, the coach of the French women’s national soccer team, finds his source of inspiration in literature, poetry and music. Who knew that the words of a 17th century French poet such as […]
...moreBringing together different artistic domains, authors merge and connect music with their words on the Book Notes series, featured on largehearted boy. Featured now is the playlist Reif Larsen created for his debut novel The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. Which music would you choose for a “very American story” that tells the “traditional coming-of-age, […]
...moreFear not, the saddening disappearance of independent bookstores is being countered by literature lovers all over the globe. The Book Barge, brainchild of Sarah Henshaw, is a canal boat turned bookstore that flows leisurely on the UK’s canal network. See how this “buoyant business” stays afloat and provides readers with a more pleasurable shopping and […]
...moreWe’ve been seeing a lot from Roxane Gay lately, on The Rumpus as well as in other literary blog realms. Ever wondered about her writing process? See what she has to say about writing in general, as well as about writers who seriously take themselves too seriously.
...moreEver read a poem about a tampon? La Petite Zine prides itself on its quirky and innovative subject matter as an online literary journal that defines itself, through what it is not, as “neither internet slop trough nor dainty hand-stitched timid lamb.”
...moreJulian Assange may have more sidekicks than we know of. You can read about how Bradley Manning, a gender-questioning soldier, came to subvert the American military’s authority over information regarding the war in Iraq. He has simultaneously earned the title of WikiLeaks hero and U.S. traitor, on account of the classified information he leaked over […]
...moreAriel Sands, the pseudonym of an internationally known nonfiction writer, is now exploring the fictional domain. Her first novel, Never the Face: A Story of Desire, explores sadomasochistic obsession through a sexually graphic narrative. Read what the author has to say about writing, gender, human sexuality, and the tradition of sadomasochistic literature.
...moreThere are now approximately 718 different apps–“PortaPoet”, “Erotic Poems” or “Prose for Bros” just to name a couple– that come up when you search “poetry” on iTunes’ App Store. Nick Laird examines how the fundamental nature of poetry is affected in our ever-globalizing world of the internet.
...moreWashington, D.C.’s literary scene will be welcoming editors and writers alike for the Indie Lit City Summit on July 16, 2011. Largely organized by Dan Brady, one of the Barrelhouse editors, the event is meant to serve as a brainstorming forum in which the future of small presses and independent magazines can be explored.
...moreExplore the many different ways of reading and understanding the writings of Philip K. Dick, particularly the unsettling yet enticing allure of his “unquotable prose”.
...moreAi Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist openly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, has been released from prison after a three-month detention. To add to his international acclaim and recognition, the blog he started in 2006 (which was shut down in 2009 by the Chinese authorities) is now being published by MIT Press. Ai Weiwei’s […]
...moreLet’s collectively remember John Ross, a “relentless political and literary experimenter” with revolutionary tendencies. Best known for his book Murdered by Capitalism and his coverage of the Zapatistas movement in Mexico, where he spent a significant portion of his life, Ross wandered the globe from San Francisco to Peru to Iraq, documenting his insurrectionist journeys. […]
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