The Shorty Q & A with Larry Smith
Larry Smith of SMITH Magazine keyed into the popularity and resonance of short, pithy bios even before “tweet” made its way firmly into the vernacular.
Features & Reviews
9241 posts
The Garden of Eden
Pretty quietly back in 1994 archaeologists found huge stone carvings buried in Turkey. About the size of the boulders at Stonehenge, these unique rocks are more than 10,000 year older…
Once the Shore: The Rumpus Review
When I first encountered Paul Yoon’s story, “Once the Shore,” the opening piece in Best American Short Stories 2006, I felt the rush of a new discovery. In the first…
How Not to Lie
Alexei Tsvetkov calls Prague “a place where you wait for something to happen.” It’s from there he wrote this dispatch on the occasion of his recent (somewhat permanent) departure. It’s…
Kindle: Definition
From Merriam-Webster: Main Entry: kin·dle Pronunciation: \ˈkin-dəl\ Function: verb Etymology: Middle English, probably modification of Old Norse kynda; akin to Old High German cuntesal fire Date: 13th century Definition (1):…
The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks
It’s a tricky thing, a memoir of a death: you know how it’s going to end. The challenge for the writer (not only with regard to the conclusion) is making…
Is the Internet Ruining Our Lives?
We’re distracted, our attention is shot, we are under surveillance, and we don’t care! We like being linked and friended by strangers who may or may not be who they say they are.
The Sweet Buy and Buy
The Author of Candy Freak Meets America’s First Chronicler of the Candy Bar
The Rumpus Interview with Paul Yoon
One time I was reading Haruki Murakami and I thought: if I had the chance, would I ever ask him why his characters always vanish? I’m not sure I’d want to. Maybe he doesn’t know either.
Eliza Doolittle in the White House
In her essay “Speaking in Tongues” in The New York Review of Books, February 26, 2009, Zadie Smith examines Barack Obama’s doubleness, not just his biracial genetic history but how…
Poems for an Economic Collapse
Katy Lederer’s poems are both romantic and political in nature. With their attention to formal and lyrical concerns, these poems tackle the problems of desire when it coincides with money…
“Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a crowd of Carhartt flannels.”
Jeff Parker‘s narrator watches from a dryer as the woman he’s laid claim to slinks off (and into bed) with a stout beef named Brick. The narrator confronts his rival,…