Essays
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Writing Your First Book
When I started writing a novel I thought, I’m not ready, because I’ve only written short stories and nobody wants them, but I also thought, For Christ’s sake, what am I going to do? I can’t keep on like this.…
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Rumpus Writers Help Define Modern Literature
Flavorwire’s Jason Diamond has compiled a list of fifty books that defined the past five years of literature. From the universally acclaimed (Wolf Hall) to the controversial (what purpose did i serve in your life), from the literary heavyweights (Tenth of…
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The Letters Festival
The Letters Festival is happening now in Atlanta. A three day literature festival with writing workshops, panels, and readings. If you’re in town, go see our very own Rumpus editor Roxane Gay at The Goat Farm Arts Center at 6:30…
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Roxane Gay on the Joys and Perils of Twitter
When we debate modernity, we tend to engage in all-or-nothing propositions. Technology is either wholly good or wholly destructive. Somewhere between these two extremes is where we will find the truth. Our rock-star essays editor Roxane Gay has an essay titled…
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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 is the more serious problem. Or is it? For Salon, our…
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The Rumpus Interview with Monica Drake
Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl and now The Stud Book, discusses the physicality of characters’ bodies, the complicated issues women face while aging, and the crucial nature of writing communities.
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Come To The Frequencies #3 Release Party In LA!
LA Rockers! Go to Stories Books and Cafe tonight at 7 pm for the release of Two Dollar Radio’s Frequencies #3, a biannual journal of artful essays. The release party features the stylistic readings of Rumpus contributor Grace Krilanovich and Sara Finnerty, as well as Trinie Dalton,…
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“What the Hell Is A ‘Writer of Color,’ Anyway?”
As part of her latest push to get the literary community talking seriously about diversity, our inimitable essays editor Roxane Gay has a piece up at the Nation about some of the thrilling, confounding, challenging books by writers of color out right…
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Roxane Gay Fights the Good Fight
The Los Angeles Times has a great overview of our essays editor Roxane Gay’s latest efforts to spread diversity in the publishing world: “We can’t think of gender without also considering race, class, sexuality and ability,” Gay says. “As long as…
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“This Novel Treads So Finely Between Hope and Despair”
Our essays editor Roxane Gay reviewed Mitchell S. Jackson’s The Residue Years for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and she makes it sound like one hell of a book: There is warmth and wit, and a hard-won wisdom about the…
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Staving-off-Despair Roundup
When there’s an injustice as great a man walking free after killing an unarmed teenager, at least we have writing to turn to. Our essays editor Roxane Gay has done some of that writing for Salon in a piece about the George…
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The Rumpus Interview with Terry Tempest Williams
In fifty-four sections, Terry Tempest Williams not only tries to gain a greater understanding of her mother, she explores her faith, her marriage, her role as a woman in the world, and much more.