Camping Out at Walmart
Because Walmart has a company policy letting people park their cars in its lots overnight, it’s possible to find travelers, long-term campers, and even small communities of people living there.…
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Lauren O'Neal
914 posts
Lauren O'Neal is an MFA student at San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in publications like Slate, The New Inquiry, and The Hairpin. You can follow her on Twitter at @laureneoneal.
On Not “Getting Over It”
I am well aware, for example, that voter suppression is a serious problem. If we’re going to consider degrees of magnitude, which is a masturbatory exercise at best, voter suppression…
Creative Writing, Creative Careers
The two central myths are one, that literary citizenship is all about self-promotion, and two, that it’s connected deeply to the “marketplace.” In an interview for Ploughshares, Tasha Golden talks to…
Support Sister Spit
Back in 1994 in San Francisco, Sini Anderson and Rumpus contributor Michelle Tea cofounded Sister Spit, a “a weekly, free, all-girl open mic” that challenged the status quo of the male-dominated…
Lovely Bones
Halloween may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep thinking about skeletons. This Lapham’s Quarterly piece by Matthew Leib starts with a science teacher perching hip bones behind his…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Hey. Kid. You wanna buy a weekend Rumpus roundup? If you missed yesterday’s Sunday Rumpus essay, “Through the Throat” by Ethel Rohan, you’ll want to correct that error immediately. A…
Queer Characters of Color in YA Novels
As a queer woman of color who writes young-adult fiction, Malinda Lo “was a little bit taken aback by the sheer paucity of books I could find about queer characters…
Literary Puns, Halloween-Style
If you like Timothy Leo Taranto’s literary puns here on the Rumpus, you’ll also enjoy these Halloween-themed literary puns over at Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Written and illustrated by Rumpus contributor…
Straight Bobs and Silk Shells: Performing Respectability
Previously, we blogged about an essay on students in for-profit schools that happened to coincide with Stephen S. Mills’s Rumpus essay about employees of for-profit schools. That essay’s author, inequality…
Halloween Costumes for Book Nerds
Need a last-minute, low-hassle outfit for trick-or-treating? This list of literary Halloween costumes (with pictures, natch) has some great ideas—just grab a “Hello, My Name Is” sticker and write “Ishmael,” and…
Atwood/Munro Selfies Justify Twitter’s Existence
Let’s all take a moment to appreciate that Twitter has realized its true purpose, achieving an all-time high point in social-media history—and, indeed, in human civilization—with one stunning development: Margaret…
A Spooktacular Halloween Reading List
It’s Halloween, and the Hairpin’s Jia Tolentino has put together a frightfully good list of spooky books to read by the light of the jack-o-lantern. This list has it all:…