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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Rumpus Originals
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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Rumpus Original Fiction: Daughterhouse
When things begin disappearing from the house, I know what is happening. My mother has always been good at taking what she is owed.
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Writing About a Muslim Girl Who Can Contain Multitudes: A Conversation with Bushra Rehman
Teenagers are brilliant—you actually get duller as an adult . . .
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Navigating the Messy, the Scary, and the Beautiful: A conversation with Marisa Crane
I think humor is so important to who we are as people, how we deal with pain, how we connect with one another. It’s essential to my being and my writing.
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February Spotlight: Letters in the Mail
Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail programs.
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A Kind of Common Madness: A Conversation with Liz Harmer
Two huge things happened to me when I was quite young: I went mad, and I fell in love, in relatively swift succession.
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Stripped: The Novel Didn’t Work
The year my baby turned sixteen was the year my novel died.
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Finding Freedom in the Absurd: Jesse Ball’s Autoportrait
From Ball’s absurdist perspective, leaning into the world’s inherent purposelessness isn’t about embracing mortality. It’s about embracing complete obliteration.
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From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: Emergency Lifeboats: 24 (12 on Each Side)
“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
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A Conversation with Daisuke Shen and Vi Khi Nao About their Collaborative Novella, Funeral
Writing started feeling interesting again, like it was worth it after all, and not just a boring thing that ate ham sandwiches on white bread for every meal and whose favorite book from last year was [Redacted] by [Famous author], which remained on the NYT Bestsellers List for what felt like forever.
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Inventing the Form of Yourself: A conversation with Maggie Millner
I have great affection for writers who come into their queerness after they’ve already written books . . .
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Enough: Three Poems
“Not all Men” / Except for the one that followed / Me down every Publix aisle, / To the bakery, to the register, / & waited for me in the lot.
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Janan Alexandra
2. In literary Arabic, kaph is used as a prefix to mean like or as or as though / 3. If kaph is a hand that means like or as or as though, then kaph is a simile / 4. Simile is a hand touching two places at once, a hand bringing together / two far away things, making a transfer (metaphor)
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Another Oracle: Lynn Xu’s Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Light
Almost ten years have passed since Lynn Xu’s debut, the luminous Debts & Lessons, introduced us to her oracle. “Let it not be for what you write, the world / I mean,” opens one of the collection’s signature center-justified poems, redeemed from any elitist snark about the form’s limitations. That collection’s first poem, “Say You […]
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Connecting Our Past to Our Present: An Interview With Jamila Minnicks
Within true community, we can experience our deepest vulnerabilities because we know that we are safe to fail, encouraged to thrive, and needed to be part of something greater than our little selves.
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Balancing the Heart and Mind: Ryan Lee Wong’s Which Side Are You On
Which Side Are You On is a novel both of the heart and the mind: one that makes you think and question your perception of the world and your place in it, and feel deeply and fervently about what matters to you.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Good Little Animals
“No remedy will undo your bad choices, or your addiction to sugar. And you can’t afford my prices anyway.”
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A rush of joy from complete strangers: An interview with Monica Macansantos
I think that it’s helpful to imagine your own people as your primary audience even when you are also writing for an audience that doesn’t necessarily belong to this community.
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Funny Women: Personal Statement for Creative Writing MFA Applications
Dear MFA Faculty at Private University,
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Rumpus Original Poetry: 3 Poems by Katie Farris
Why bother closing a door / when everyone demands it open?
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RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: UPWARD MOBILITY by José Olivarez
An excerpt from The Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s February selection, PROMISES OF GOLD by José Olivarez
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The Most-Read Essays of 2022
Essays are all about reflection, and we thought we’d kick off 2023 with a look at the most-read pieces of last year. It can sometimes feel like hours (years) of hard work disappear into the maw of our short attention spans, and these lists serve as important reminders of the work. — The Eds. *** #1 […]
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What Is a Person?: Lydia Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow
Safety requires setting up clear boundaries, but a restricted life is lonely and isolating and often impossible to bear.
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