The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Alexis Ivy
“Writing in this way allows me to put order in this disordered world.”
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Posts Tagged: homeless
Voices on Addiction: The Economics of Gentrified Vice
The marijuana shop shimmers from the abyss, a glowing green jewelry box atop the hill.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Where to Find Him
It felt like the sun beating down on closed eyelids.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #198: Rene Denfeld
“Healing is a process you must actively engage in.”
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Love in the Belly of Beginning
I think this is what love is, critical and enduring.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: All Good Things Come to an End
I didn’t feel bad about lying because the truth would have hurt her.
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Voices on Addiction: The Honeybee
She never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
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The Storming Bohemian #34: Descent into the Underworld
The last time I punked the muse, I wrote of the summer solstice, a meditation into the heart of the sun. My goal was to leave behind the ever-more-depressing news cycle, and touch some place deep down where hope resides. We live in the Sun, I concluded. I envisioned a home where we could all […]
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No Other Options
Five months after my dad’s eviction, in the warehouse, I looked through cardboard boxes, stacked on top of one another like a game of Jenga.
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The Rumpus Interview with J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Lee Clay Johnson
Lee Clay Johnson discusses his novel Nitro Mountain, growing up with bluegrass musician parents, and what people are capable of under the right set of circumstances.
...moreTaking It to the Street
We had to ask everyone. Not just the people who looked “good” to get money from. And that was great because of course I was surprised by who responded and who didn’t. I feel, in general, in my life at this moment, I’m very aware of how off my preconceptions are, whereas I’ve always thought […]
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Albums of Our Lives: Rosanne Cash’s Black Cadillac
In her voice, I am held, cradled even. I am equal parts longing and hope. I am home.
...moreDown, Out, and “Paved With Anguish”
At the Guardian, Tim Cooke investigates why writers’ experiences with homelessness and destitution fascinates readers: So what is the attraction of being down and out? For some, the prospect of real, hard-hitting subject matter has proved irresistible, while for others the route to the streets has been paved with anguish. Historically, those who have deliberately flung […]
...moreGiving Voice to the Homeless Writing Community
Boston-based literary magazine The Pilgrim was founded by journalist James Parker with the aim to bring the unheard voices of the homeless community to print while encouraging, teaching, and healing through the act of writing. At the Boston Globe, Zachary Jason takes us inside a meeting of the Black Seed Writers Group as they create the 39th […]
...moreA Zone of Psychological Relief
Over at Lit Hub, Michele Filgate reports on the growing influence of Street Lit, which provides writing workshops and books to the homeless community in Austin, Texas. Filgate also talks with Street Lit founder Barry Maxwell, as he opens up about the “relief” reading offered him while he was homeless: Reading was such a zone of psychological relief, and […]
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The Conversation: Jeremy Clark and Thiahera Nurse
I’m thinking about the difference between “I stay somewhere” and “I live somewhere.”
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Anna March’s Reading Mixtape #21: John Irving
And that is how I feel about John Irving novels. That they gave me everything.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Sarah Einstein
Mot was living my own fear… I wanted to learn from him how I might survive, if I too ended up without a home, without the resources to live what I thought of as a minimally decent life.
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The Rumpus Interview with Christopher Bollen
Author Christopher Bollen talks about his sophomore novel, Orient, secrets and privacy, sexual orientation in fiction, and the lost art of the whodunit mystery.
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Working Draft of Another Life
We open in a wide framing shot of autumn-tinged trees lining a schoolyard. A procession of first-graders walk-run-skip down the sidewalk circling the school.
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Life In a Box
The Niemyers’s experiment is part family adventure, part exercise in extreme minimalism, and part matter of convenience.
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The Rumpus Interview with Chris Stroffolino
Poet and musician Chris Stroffolino talks about his new album Griffith Park, recording with the Silver Jews, and life inside his piano van.
...moreInvisible from the Inside Out
Everything I have, aside from what I’m wearing, is in a light brown vinyl purse with two outside pockets. I hold the purse close at all times, and I sleep with it under my head like a rigid, desperate pillow.
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