Other
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Straight Bobs and Silk Shells: Performing Respectability
Previously, we blogged about an essay on students in for-profit schools that happened to coincide with Stephen S. Mills’s Rumpus essay about employees of for-profit schools. That essay’s author, inequality scholar Tressie McMillan Cottom, has a stunning new essay up…
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Halloween Costumes for Book Nerds
Need a last-minute, low-hassle outfit for trick-or-treating? This list of literary Halloween costumes (with pictures, natch) has some great ideas—just grab a “Hello, My Name Is” sticker and write “Ishmael,” and you’re good to go. There are also some fantastic examples…
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Fantasy Football For Poets: Week 9
“Okay, what would your children want me to do?” asked head trainer Paul Sparling. “Take care of daddy?”
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Atwood/Munro Selfies Justify Twitter’s Existence
Let’s all take a moment to appreciate that Twitter has realized its true purpose, achieving an all-time high point in social-media history—and, indeed, in human civilization—with one stunning development: Margaret Atwood’s adorable selfies of her and Alice Munro celebrating Munro’s…
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A Spooktacular Halloween Reading List
It’s Halloween, and the Hairpin’s Jia Tolentino has put together a frightfully good list of spooky books to read by the light of the jack-o-lantern. This list has it all: “futurist nightmare, teenage romance with a Bataille-esque hint of sexual…
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New Readers Report Theme: Magic
After reading all your splendid short pieces on the theme “My Summer’s End,” we’re eager for another “Rumpus Readers Report”! This month’s theme? Magic. Please send your submissions, maximum 400 words, to Susan Clements, silentjoy2001 AT yahoo.com. We’ll choose the best ones…
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Carrie and the “Strong Female Character”
“The “strong female character” who comes closest to equaling Carrie’s volume of carnage is arguably the Bride. But before she turns the House of Blue Leaves into a crimson slip-and-slide, she is battered in flashback after flashback…Before she gets to…
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“Why Am I Waiting on The Approval of People I Don’t Know?”
“It’s 2011. There’s a shoebox under my desk filled with rejection letters. In defiant bold letters I’ve labeled it Reasons to Keep Writing.” Over at The Outlet, writer and recent Rumpus interviewee Nathaniel Kressen chronicles his journey from frustrated to…
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Ghost Horse Wins Award
Congratulations to Rumpus reviewer Thomas H. McNeely for winning the 9th Annual Gival Press Novel Award! The winning novel, Ghost Horse, tells “the story of a boy’s journey to escape an abusive relationship with his father and to discover the truth about his…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Happy whatever. What could be spookier than oooovvvveeeerrrr ppppooooppppuuuullllaaaatttttiiiiiooooonnnnn. Beware the lava planet! Relevant: no, sugar doesn’t make children hyper. Hermits and feral children also give me the creeps. And now let us talk about the ghost in the rainbow.
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Long Forgotten Books
In 1934, Malcolm Cowley, editor of The New Republic, got in touch with many renowned American writers asking them to list 3 or 4 of the best hidden gems of literature adding a few sentences to present the titles to…
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Mr. Bad News Who?
It can be a harrowing experience, Whitman knows, requiring that the writer become an instant historian, assessing in a few hours the dead man’s life with lucidity, accuracy, and objectivity. Gay Talese believes “Mr. Bad News” is one of the…