Writing When Your Life Depends on It
Do I want to live, or do I want to write? Sometimes I think it’s that simple.
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Posts Tagged: cancer
CAN-CER-VIVE
I’ve only had breast cancer once and already I know too much.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Basement
Looking back, it feels like I knew.
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Naked in Japan
Thin bodies, thick bodies, fit bodies, round bodies. I’d never seen so much flesh.
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Hard to Swallow: Allie Rowbottom’s Jell-O Girls
Jell-O, that seemingly innocuous, gem-colored dessert, has a darker history than one might expect.
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A Legacy of Wisdom: The Final Voicemails by Max Ritvo
Is death a miracle or destruction?
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A Tiny Wellspring of Comfort: Nina Riggs’s The Bright Hour
[Nina] is not a warrior but a reconnoiter at life’s edge.
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Monsters Are Fun: Talking with Clinton Crockett Peters
Clinton Crockett Peters discusses his new book, PANDORA’S GARDEN.
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Hannibal Lecter, My Therapist
In the dark, I felt at home in the underground bunker where the hospital stored its violent men.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Lacking World
I acted childishly. But, in my defense, it was childish only if we actually lived in a world where Shakespeare had never existed.
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Entertaining and Useful: A Conversation with Aline Kominsky-Crumb
Aline Kominsky-Crumb discusses her graphic memoir, Love That Bunch, drawing cancer, inadequacies of early work, and her burial wishes.
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A Part of Me
Now my not wanting men to be front and center in my life capitalized sperm into a rare commodity. Empowered reproduction is largely a myth.
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Songs of Our Lives: Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died”
All around me were strangers. All around me were friends. A dark glittering sea of fists. What a terrible, wonderful thing, to be welcomed into this fellowship at last.
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These Women Are Ready to Scream: Danielle Lazarin’s Back Talk
Lazarin has written her heart out chronicling the lives of recognizable girls and women as they come of age, find their footing and chart their path through life’s curves, on their own terms.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rebecca
Grace shook her head, surprised by both her reluctance to speak and her impulse to lie. She had seen many photos of Rebecca.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #119: Joyce Maynard
“I was diving straight into the wave, right into the source of my greatest grief.”
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The Tongue Goes
“In a nutshell,” he said, “they’re going to excise a dime-sized piece of your tongue and replace it with muscle and tendons from your left wrist.”
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What Do I Do With My Fear?: A Conversation with Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra discusses her new essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, fear, privilege, and the intersection of politics and everyday life.
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What to Read When It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month
A list of books that offer various ways to understand what breast cancer means in our lives, individually and collectively.
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If You Are Abandoned
My uncle and I had shared many silences together and, in those silences, I felt as if we knew each other.
...moreWorking through Trauma
Danilova says the act of making the album helped her to work through this shared existential trauma.
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Internal Combustion
I start talking late, making word-sounds with my throat long before I open my mouth. When my lips and tongue begin to unfreeze, the progression of brain cancer locks my grandfather’s jaw in place.
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The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.
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Periphery: Exploring Bombs, Boundaries, and Family History
Have you ever seen a feathery shadow at the edge of your eye? Was it a figure? Did it cross into your vision, like a hummingbird there and gone?
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The Gate of Permission: A Conversation with Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel discusses her newest novel, Before Everything, living through and beyond grief, and why she loves secrets.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
We’re halfway through June, and though the first day of summer isn’t technically until June 21, I think we can all agree that we’re well into the sweltering season. This week’s story captures those quintessential staples of summer—swimming pools, soft serve, bike rides, frozen Capri Suns—but it’s no typical poolside read. “We Were the Drowners” by […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Hello
All those prank calls were partly a way of taking control of the unknown, the ambiguity of that space between “hello” and whatever comes next.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Victim Story, a Mix CD
All the cruelty of the past seasons washed away with the new layer of snow. I thought your streak was over. I thought we could be friends.
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Elegy with Records on the Doorstep
The old music still filled pits in him like sawdust and wood glue do a nail hole. The songs didn’t say anything new over the years, but they provided home when he missed it.
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Voices on Addiction: Twenty-Five
I know that there are those who would argue that alcoholism is a singularly extreme condition, and I get that, but I’ve always felt clear that there’s a lot of overlap between alcoholism and plain old ordinary humanity.
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