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  • Kansas Shutdown

    Kansas is facing a total shutdown of their abortion clinics as of this Friday, after a new law passed requiring all clinics to apply new (and strict) standards that regulate everything from number and size of rooms per clinic to…

  • Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee

    The brightest thing in the universe! (!!!) Let’s talk about Civil War envelopes. Here are some tiny landscapes on spoons for you. You know what we need? Pedal powered school buses. 50 Watts wants you to look at Japan’s oldest…

  • Cliché Shaming

    At The Guardian poets reveal “the expressions that have become such cliches that they have lost all meaning.” Explanations included. “Devastated” (and its variations) is a repeat winner. Is that more of a British thing? Also: “Britain is leading the…

  • Experimental Literature

    Dennis Cooper answers five questions on experimental literature yesterday at HTML giant. The author is asked about the body, politics, economics and race. He also suggests a hefty dose of works to check out. On the unique “use value” of…

  • Dear Sugar Will Be Back Tomorrow!

    Everybody! This is the time of the week where you’re probably itching in anticipation for your Sugar fix, but we are asking you to hold off one more day. Sugar will be back tomorrow to supply you with your weekly…

  • Celebrating 75 Years of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop

    This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which we are excited to participate in! The Rumpus will be featuring essays from Iowa alumni in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for those and stay updated…

  • Accidental Political Poets

    Poetry is the literary art form that can most readily adapt the grammatically-fraught, political commentaries of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, apparently. Michael Solomon compiled and edited a bunch of Sarah Palin-isms in I Hope Like Heck: The Selected Poems…

  • Chinese Political Prisoners and “Confessing”

    “Chinese confessions are as much a ritual as the kowtow, the ‘three kneelings and the nine prostrations,’ of dynastic times. Foreign journalists are occasionally compelled to make such confessions, although they are in far less danger than Chinese dissidents. At…

  • Goodbye Oxford Comma

    A University of Oxford Style Guide has decided to go minimalist on all the grammarians and drop the oxford comma. They’re making big decisions over there. Watch out: ‘“As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write…

  • Readin Not Schemin

    No need to worry, everybody! Ponzi schemer extraordinaire, Bernie Madoff, is doing totally fine in prison. He’s been reading a bunch! James Michener novels, to be specific. Will books enrich him with a newfound sense of moral integrity? Probably not…

  • Kafka-ish

    Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is being adapted into a “fresh modern horror” film of the same name. Shooting for the movie is beginning next month, but these things are already true: the traveling salesman Gregor Samsa will be a high-school teenager…

  • Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee

    Hey dudes, don’t give monkeys your food. Dorothy Parker’s writer’s block in telegraph form. I am a big fan of re-purposed factories. This is a fact. Have you guys seen the new Canadian money? Effective library displays!