Building the Muscle: A Conversation with Kristi Coulter
Kristi Coulter discusses her debut essay collection, NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS.
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Posts Tagged: infidelity
Rumpus Original Fiction: The Earth Revolves around the Sun
I imagined myself from the outside: the picture of a woman waiting.
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Mom Vagina
When the physical therapist explains the electric dildo she holds in her hand will reset the nerve endings in my vagina so I won’t need to pee every hour, I say, “Get it in me and let’s go.”
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Rumpus Exclusive: “The Last Civilized House” by Lee Martin
Once upon a time, there was a man and a wife and a child that the wife decided she didn’t want.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Even the Moon
When you finished, several minutes passed before we spoke. You dipped a finger in a pool of candle wax. How could I know this was the only real secret you’d ever kept?
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Playing God: A Conversation with Daniel Olivas
Daniel Olivas discusses his recent short story collection, The King of Lighting Fixtures, writing humor, and the role of religion in his work.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Whole World Is Desert
This is what I want him to think of me. The girl poised to surf a wave under the heaviness of the full moon, the ocean around her radiant with light.
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Ten Minutes of Motherhood: A Conversation with Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy on The Rules Do Not Apply, the illusion of control, and language’s inability to express grief.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Mustard Seeds
At the end of the week, which was long with sleepless nights, Miri picked her heart out of the kitchen sink, put it in a paper lunch bag, and took it to the witch.
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Reading across Cultures: A Conversation with Ratika Kapur
Ratika Kapur discusses her latest book, The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma, the disappointing romance of affairs, and how people carry on after doing the unthinkable.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: My Souls Are Out A-Wandering
What is marriage but another form of colonization? A renaming? A power taken, a power taken away?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Summer of Families
“What do you think about this,” he said, measured and cool. “What if we offer a service where people can pay to be in our family, but only for a few hours.”
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, a new Maggie Shipstead story at Virginia Quarterly Review explores love, infidelity, and the ways life can slip from under your feet like an avalanche. Bonus: there is also a literal avalanche. The story, “Backcountry,” follows a twenty-five-year-old ski instructor named Ingrid (#1 baby name for future ski instructors) who meets a fifty-plus-year-old […]
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The Truth About Lying
My gut is a red, fiery drum, a beacon of rosy light. My instinct to run is a bright radioactive pink arrow, a bloody blade. I was correct.
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Not a Widow
I want to think of him as inhuman and selfish instead of an admirable man who eventually succumbed to a brain chemistry he had no control over.
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#Betrayal: On Instagram, Is Hell Other Women?
Instagram: an app powerful enough to blow a million Think Pieces to smithereens in everything it says about female relations.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Year of Light and Dark
It isn’t much of a contest to say that Julie Coyne is the single most inspirational human being I have ever met. And I am here—in Xela—in part because I could use a little inspiration.
...moreTo Cheat or Not to Cheat
Life coach, Rumpus columnist, and novelist Rick Moody lends his ear to those at the crossroads of love over at Lit Hub. This week, he addresses the unfaithful: And: what we’re talking about, here, really, is intimacy. In order for someone in a relationship to be especially intimate with you, he (or she) has to be less […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
If you’re not yet aware of the online magazine Storychord, take this chance to get acquainted. Each issue features a short story, a piece of visual art, and a musical composition, which combine to make a sort of multimedia storytelling triptych and a unique reading experience. In this week’s selection, Laura Bernard’s illustration of a […]
...moreSong of the Day: “The Less I Know The Better”
Australian musician Kevin Parker’s band, Tame Impala, is known for blending musical influences like psychedelia and lo-fi, but Parker’s proficiency as a songwriter only adds to his resume. On “The Less I Know The Better,” off the album Currents, a catchy bass line propels Parker’s voice as he sings about his longing for another man’s partner: She said […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Monica Byrne
Monica Byrne talks about sex, gender, the insidious power of stereotypes, and putting relationships between women at the center of her novel, The Girl in the Road.
...moreMourning the Book
I expected to feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose,” but instead I felt lost, grief-stricken. It was a mixture of sadness for the main character and a fear that I might yet ruin my own life—but mostly I wanted to be back in the middle of that book.
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