Columns
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
Rumpus Original Poetry: Gabriela Mayes
Gabriela Mayes is a Brazilian writer whose work spans poetry, nonfiction, and cultural criticism. Her recent writing appears or is forthcoming in The Westchester Review, Shelf Magazine, and Chiricú Journal. She directs graduate initiatives that bridge the academic and public…
-
Hospitality Training and Taking Care of the Reader: A Conversation with Gabrielle Hamilton
“ I don’t like reading books where you can feel the writer fiddling with you and admiring themselves as they manipulate the words on the page. I don’t love a self-congratulatory writer—you can sniff it on the page immediately—more than…
-
House of Three Rooms
“The body flicks the lights on. A yellowing glow floods the interior, like a head full of nothing. The lights are on, goes the saying, but nobody’s home. My father says this about the dog too dumb to hunt. The…
-
Rumpus Original Poetry: Annie Kantar
Annie Kantar is the author of Means to Be Lucky (Poets & Traitors Press), and translator of the Book of Job, commissioned by Koren Publishers, and of Leah Goldberg’s collection of poems, With This Night (University of Texas Press), which…