Finding a way to grieve for the passing of a child is a complicated matter. Poet Edward Hirsch lost his son in 2011, and has just completed a 76-page elegy…
In the Sunday Interview, Anna March talks with Robin Black about her debut novel, Life Drawing. Black—who also received acclaim for her short story collection, If I Loved You, I Would…
Death is messy and time-consuming and exhausting for the survivors. Death is confusing and maddening. At Blunderbuss Magazine, Essay Liu, a Taiwanese writer, documents her father’s death and the rituals…
Every holiday has its parallel griefs, as much for what isn’t present as for what is. In the New Yorker, Ruth Margalit writes beautifully about experiencing Mother’s Day, after her mother is…
John W. Evans talks about his memoir Young Widower, which was partly borne from two Rumpus essays, and how to make meaning of something—especially grief and loss—if not through narrative.
Emily Rapp’s name has appeared frequently on the Rumpus as her book The Still Point of the Turning World came out detailing her and her son Ronan’s experience with Tay-Sachs…
It seemed like nature might be offering up something fraught with emotion, a beautiful image that a writer could imbue with heartbreaking symbolism. But I couldn’t come up with anything. It was just fall, and so the leaves were red.
Following some tumultuous years that included divorce, birth, separation, and her mother’s suicide, Rumpus contributor Gayle Brandeis has written an essay at The Manifest Station where she releases all of…
I’m sitting across from the man who looks exactly like my father would look if my father had lived to be fifty-seven. If my father hadn’t died sixteen years ago when I was thirteen. But he did.
If Charlie had finally lost his focus after all these years, well, no wonder. I’d have lost it after about fifteen minutes wrestling with CF. We had to help him find his resolve again and get back his health, not stand there crying.