Other
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Homophobia in Hip-Hop
Rumpus pal W. Kamau Bell talked to prominent hip-hop video-blogger Jay Smooth in an interview spotlighted over at Racialicious. The two discuss homophobia in hip-hop and the eminent wisdom of black queer icons like James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and Audre…
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Fantasy Football for Poets: Week 8
No one knew it was a torn ACL, which means that Reggie’s incredible 189-game streak is over, his season is over, and perhaps even, at his age, his thirteen-year career is over.
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Who Pays Writers?
Which publications pay writers? How do writers make enough money to survive? Scratch, a new online magazine edited by Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin, aims to find out. Their inaugural issue is free and includes an interview with Jonathan Franzen,…
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Safety First
Back in 2012, we published an essay by Lauren Becker called “Safety” about her experience being stalked. It was beautifully written and one of the scariest things you’ll ever read. Now, almost a year later, she’s written a followup piece…
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“I Threw Out Everything”
For Guernica, Jamilah King talks to Daniel Alarcón about his new novel, “Peru’s most notorious prison,” and what it feels like to throw out 400 pages of work and start over: I showed it to a couple friends with a great…
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RIP Carlos Batts
We are shocked and saddened to hear of the passing at age 40 of Carlos Batts, the fetish, entertainment, and music photographer/director we interviewed with his wife and artistic partner April Flores not two months ago. His obituary on Adult Video…
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What Are We Supposed to Do About Gentrification?
We’ve previously written a bit about gentrification, particularly in San Francisco. Gabriel Metcalf, writing for the Atlantic‘s Cities blog, has some thoughts about what caused the problem and what we might try to do to solve it: Many outspoken citizens did—and…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Also you can pre-order/preview my band’s new album now if you want to (I would love it if you would). The street monkeys of Jakarta are the scariest thing on the internet today. We should all be furious that we…
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Weekly Rumpus Fiction: Lisa P. Sutton
The next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Lisa P. Sutton! Here’s an excerpt: When he touches her knee, just a forefinger drawn lightly over her jeans, she moves her coffee cup and saucer to cover the spot. It is both…
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JHUMPA LAHIRI’S LOWLAND
The final key moment was when, suddenly, I was able to write the novel without feeling as though I needed the crutch of all the research and all of the books, and I felt that the characters were strong enough…
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Everybody Cut Loose
No matter which of these stories I told, I would always end with the line about how my father was so strict he wouldn’t let me watch movies, listen to rock music, or go to dances. Nine times out of…
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Zadie Smith Remembers Her Father
There is a sentimental season, early on in the process of mourning, in which you believe that everything you happen to be doing or seeing or eating, the departed person would also have loved to do or see or eat,…