From the Archive: We Are More: New Country, Old Bones
What did you hope to build in the / New country?
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Rumpus Originals
August Spotlight: Letters in the Mail
Chatting with two of August’s Letters in the Mail featured authors about some of their favorite books.
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Make something inexplicable happen: An Interview with Morgan Talty
What’s funnier than somebody having a mental breakdown? We all experienced it, so why can’t we laugh at that?
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Between the Lands of the Living and the Dead: When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
. . . as the St. Bernard women in Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel When We Were Birds have understood from generation to generation, the dead need to stay dead . . .
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Bridle
But I am, I wanted to say. I am willing.
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Form as a Metaphor for Fatness: A Conversation with Stephanie Rogers
Is it ridiculous to say don’t give up? Because I mean it.
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From the Archive | Spotlight Comic: “Fashion Dos and Don’ts 2050: Climate Apocalypse Edition”
A satiric comic that looks at the grim reality of climate catastrophe through the humorous lens of fashion tips.
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Just by Looking at Him: Ryan O’Connell Trust-Falls into Novel Writing
. . . after I finished my first book, I was like, “I’m never writing a book again,” because that process was so miserable. But now that I’ve written this novel . . .
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Anna Maria Hong
Irritation Odes
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Life has a way of taking that out of you: A conversation with Tom Perrotta
. . . the novel exists as a form because it allows you to see both the character’s thoughts and the character’s actions, and they rarely line up.
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An Open Letter in Lieu of a Review: on Still Life by Jay Hopler
. . . there’s some vital aspect to a person even the approach of oblivion can’t erase.
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RUMPUS BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: Wonderlands by Charles Baxter
This, I think, is one definition of sanity—the ability to keep things in perspective.
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The Last Book of Poems I Loved: Louise Glück’s Winter Recipes from the Collective
“I was glad at least to have heard it.”
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Swallowing the Darkness: Gag Reflex by Elle Nash
““i’m soft-skinned but my bones have hardened calcium deposited cartilage, the fat around my heart lithified with the carnage of constrictors around tiny mice ribs, squeezed till it removes the soft mealy insides. sucked out by standards i will never reach. by these industry snakes.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Shadow Catchers
One month after receiving the doctor’s revised prognosis, Zina attended her father’s funeral. The next day, she boarded a minibus back home, a satchel of herbs for her special teas stashed in her bag. She resumed her position as the second child, confident that things would be different. / She knew now how to shift the world in her favor.
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What to Read When You’d Rather be in Australia
Featuring an “erotic lesbian crime thriller,” because we need that in our lives right now.
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RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: “42” by Aldo Amparán
An excerpt from The Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s August selection
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Enough: Incandescent
I can see your mouth moving, a monologue of mock misery meant to quiet me, accelerating your tears for your finishing act. But all I hear is the roar of my own voice, the unholy screech, the gravel of my throat grinding against itself, finding its traction.
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Eve L. Ewing
They look / for a lash that isn’t there, even them that never felt it. / It’s in their shoulders. / The lash lives in their shoulders.
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We Live in a Speculative Fiction Novel Right Now: A Conversation with Andrew DeYoung
Rather than work being a place to follow your dream, or make a difference, it’s the place you work because you have to figure out a way to pay your rent.
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From the Archive: Rivers of Babylon: The Story of a Third-Trimester Abortion
. . . I desperately, beyond reason, wanted an intact body for burial. I wanted it viscerally, animally, the way your body wakes up in the night looking for a newborn, the way you feel a physical connection to your children even when you cannot see them, the way you want something when everything else has been taken from you. It is the same reason I buried him; I wanted to know where he had gone from me and how.
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This Is What We Have Inherited: A Conversation with Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
I think it is imperative to explore the limits of the colonial narrative and its dictates because, whether we like it or not, the world that we have inherited was created by that narrative. If we have any hope of moving past it, we have to understand it fully.
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Text Colliding with Text: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Much of the novel questions what constitutes a life: If it’s reduced or subverted or is itself a simulation, is it still worth living?
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Today, You’re a Black Revolutionary
The important thing to remember when climbing a pole, a rope, a mountain is to not look down.
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From the Archive: Funny Women Whimsical Abortion Procedures
Mentally replay every worst memory of your childhood until pregnancy is scared away. Works every time.
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RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: “WE ARE YOUNG WE ARE BEAUTIFUL” by Zeina Hashem Beck
An excerpt from The Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s July selection
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WHAT TO READ WHEN YOU’VE MADE IT HALFWAY THROUGH 2022
Rumpus editors share forthcoming titles they are excited to read
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From the Archive: National Poetry Month Day 8: “cum shot” by Danez Smith
Poetry by Danez Smith for Poem-a-Day
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Marisa Siegel
Talking with Marisa Siegel about FIXED STARS, a little treasure.
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