Jessica Anthony’s first novel, The Convalescent (McSweeney’s Books) is the first recipient of McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. It’s about a really short guy who sells meat out of…
My high school soccer coach was a Guatemalan immigrant who had made his way to the States when he was in his twenties. At first he’d earned his living as…
I put myself in the group home. I was in the therapist office with my mom and I said, "I give up. I'm not going to try anymore," meaning getting along with my mom, and he suggested the group home.
Reading such a dense novel can feel like being in the backseat of a car traveling nonstop through a safari, with a reader wanting to stop and poke around a…
The summer of 1983 I was nineteen-years old. I was very muscular and very blonde and had nice features. Girls liked me. I was lousy in bed but that wasn’t…
Legendary clothing designer Valentino Garavani dressed everyone from Jackie Onassis to Gwyneth Paltrow, and made — and spent! — millions doing it. But why should a Rumpus reader care?
“I like to see the most aggressive of [horror movies]—Dawn of the Dead, for instance—as lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat…
“All of us, all the time, are searching for some order in the world/universe/our lives. We’re searching for guiding principles and explanations. Especially in times of stress, we tend to…
Ten years ago today, Attila Ambrus (a.k.a. the “Whiskey Robber”), arguably the worst pro-hockey goalie in history, hastily twisted together a makeshift rope out of computer cables and bedsheets and…