Saturday History Lesson: Flannery O’Connor and Betty Hester
Most people writing to their favorite authors do not, I’d guess, think they will get an answer back, and perhaps Betty Hester didn’t either.
Rumpus Originals
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A National Poetry Month Special: “Bones” by Melissa Broder, Illustrated by Paul Tunis
When Paul Tunis emailed me and asked if I'd be interested in looking at a comic he'd drawn in collaboration with the poet Melissa Broder, my answer was an unequivocal yes.
I Have a Jaw That Seeks Chunks
In Melissa Broder’s second collection, Meat Heart, there is a burgeoning tension between the spiritual life of the imagination and its blood and guts container—the forehead, the hips, the heart—that…
The Rumpus Interview with Mehreen Jabbar
Mehreen Jabbar is a young South Asian filmmaker, whose debut feature film Ramchand Pakistani has impressed audiences and juries around the world, receiving the FIPRESCI prize among others. Understated yet…
The Body Place Is a Thinking Place
From these two new books, the reader can gather that it isn't just the day that is strong and can withstand change, but the same words can be applied to the speakers of these poems and to Myles herself.
Albums of Our Lives: Whitney Houston and Whitney
I didn’t know Whitney Houston, and yet there I was, weeping. I’d read the Tweets, watched the videos, and re-posted a video of her singing “I’m Changing” live from when…
Not Just A Review, My Life and The Fallback Plan
I thought I’d managed to sidestep the purgatorial phase between college and adulthood. Immediately after graduation, a friend hooked me up with a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica. I’d lined…
What We Hunger For
I am always interested in the representations of strength in women, where that strength comes from, how it is called upon when it is needed most, and what it costs for a woman to be strong.
Broad As the Mouth of the Hudson
In Jeff Sharlet’s latest book about religion in America, Sweet Heaven When I Die, “religion” is something protean and heterodox.
The Rumpus Interview with Thomas Thwaites
Toast is hardly a starting point for a theory of late-day capitalism and consumption. Unless that toast is in the hands of Thomas Thwaites, that is. A British conceptual designer…
The Rumpus Interview with Travis Mathews
Travis Mathews is a San Francisco based filmmaker whose movies focus on the emotional and intimate lives of gay men. With both a masters in Counseling Psychology and a background…