The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #108: Akhil Sharma
There is no pretention here toward lasting fulfillment, but there are quiet dinners of lentils and rice.
Features & Reviews
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The Strain of Reality: Reset by Ellen Pao
A woman is simultaneously too many things and not enough at all, forcing her vibrancy to smudge into an opaque blur.
A Hinging Thing: Talking with Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith discusses her new collection Good Bones, how motherhood has changed her writing, and what it felt like to have a poem go viral.
Chewing Rocks: A Conversation with David Biespiel
David Biespiel discusses his new book, The Education of a Young Poet, being comfortable in uncertainty, and extending moments in writing.
What to Read When It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month
A list of books that offer various ways to understand what breast cancer means in our lives, individually and collectively.
Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
President of Smut
Our country has always been ruled by and for the privileged, but never has this glaring injustice in the system been made so shamelessly clear.
An Answer Should Lead to Another Question: Talking with Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout discusses Conflation, a vinyl recording from Fonograf Editions that “interrogates the difference between texture and tactile; thing unspoken versus thing unseen.”
The Universal Tether of Identity: Caca Dolce by Chelsea Martin
At its core, the collection is recollected through a loose chronology of memoir essays, all of which will appeal to readers’ younger selves: who were we when we were teenagers and who are we now?
It’s All Finger-Pointing at the Moon: A Conversation with Carolyn Zaikowski
Carolyn Zaikowski discusses her most recent book, In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse, the psychology of repetition, and honoring the power of language.
What to Read When It’s Been a Hell of a Year
Each of these books, in various ways, wound the crank on my empathy machine, and reminded me that telling a story can be a defiant act.
Playing with Genre: Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling
Whether you read it as poetry or memoir, this collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent.