From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: Lunch Money
Out here on the balcony, perched three stories above the ground, we’re in her world.
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The Person Is Not The Body: An Interview with Rushi Vyas
I think, as writers, we only have so much choice. Obsessions emerge from our lived experience.
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From the Archives: Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Luther Hughes
About storms, truly, what did I know?
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Science and Symbols: An Interview with Kevin Jared Hosein
I like to say this is a novel about split-second decisions, because either you go for it or you sink into the water and be forgotten.
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The Muralist
The thing about living with my ex’s mural of his own ex about two hundred feet from my apartment was that I loved it.
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It’s Not Cancel Culture, It’s Scam Culture: Jinwoo Chong’s Flux
“Can we separate the art from the artist?” If you’re like me, you’ve been in more than a few versions of this particular conversation. You could even, at this point in the post-MeToo era, write a MadLib of this conversation. It starts out in the abstract. Within the first thirty words, the term “canceled” will […]
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Run, Sister
“You better start running,” he says, as he takes the hammer from its peg. “Your lucky hammer!” he yells.
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When Craft Becomes an Act of Love: An Interview with Gayle Brandeis
I want to be fully present for whatever I’m doing, whether it’s teaching, or writing, or being with people I love.
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What to Read When: You Want to Think Kaleidoscopically About Place
A stitch that sews both self and world into being.
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ENOUGH: Power Dome
Women just need to live / inside a geodesic dome / powered by male rage; / the angrier they get / the safer we’ll be
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March Spotlight: Letters in the Mail
embracing ambivalence, returning to one’s hometown and the musings it inspires during a time of collective dread, a canine writing team, and the power of imagination
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Clearing the Bar with Care and Complexity: Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind
The Hurting Kind’s epigraph, a quote from Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik [implores] us to “Sing as if nothing were wrong. / Nothing is wrong.” When we read Limón, we can almost believe that.
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This Is All the Time We Get: A Conversation with Felicia Chiao
I’ve been drawing the figure alone in interiors for a long time, and when the lockdown happened, my work blew up. I recognized, “Oh, suddenly everyone’s depressed at the same time.”
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An Apparent Lowering of Moral Standards in the Lepidoptera
“Is this sex?” “No.” “Is this sex?” “No.” “How about now?” “Maybe.” “I think so.” “Probably.”
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Hometown Humbling: Delia Cai’s Central Places
The shame is cumulative.
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All the World is a K-Drama: A Conversation with Matthew Salesses
I wanted to be able to frame the story within this understanding that these are powerful forces and that these are stories we’ve heard a lot before, and that these stories get in the way of, or make it hard to understand or even listen to, a more authentic or more real story about who people are or can be.
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Funny Women: A Literary Agent’s Manuscript Wish List
I need a book that gives me the high of MDMA without the risk of faintness, dehydration, or a nosy mall cop telling me to put my shirt back on in the food court.
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RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: HAPPY WARRIOR by Michael Chang
An excerpt from The Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s March selection, SYNTHETIC JUNGLE by Michael Chang
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All Storytelling is Nonbinary: An interview with Jennifer Savran Kelly
People who feel safe and able or who have privilege should use the space they create for themselves to make more space for people from marginalized communities. We all need to hold space for one another.
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Languages Within A Language: Camilo José Cela’s The Hive
How do you represent, in a different tongue, the languages within the language of the original text?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Career Day
It was too late for Lucy to be whatever she wanted. All she could do was be herself.
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Belonging across multiple places: Sorayya Khan examines the concept of home
I think we are all shaped by history, whether we accept this or not.
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What to Read When: You Like to Look at Birds
I have long gravitated toward books that know where they are situated.
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From the Archives: Voices on Addiction: None of This Is Bullshit
I was fine. No one and nothing could hurt me.
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RUMPUS BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: GHOST PEOPLE by Sabrina Orah Mark
An excerpt from The Rumpus Book Club’s March selection, HAPPILY by Sabrina Orah Mark
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Holding On and Letting Go: Rebecca Aronson’s Anchor
Gravity is what tethers us to the earth and to those we love, but it is also what we are constantly trying to escape. Anchor is about both these states—the holding on and the letting go—and the tension between them.
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Challenging the Length and Notion of Storytelling: A conversation with Davon Loeb
. . . good writing and good storytelling has to exceed the relatable . . .
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Artifacts of Adolescence: Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler
We lose track of things and people over time. But back then, they felt like everything.
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