Hell Is a Young Man: Fraternity by Benjamin Nugent
The brutality of frat culture, Nugent suggests, is a veneer that hardly masks its devotees’ miseries and insecurities.
...more
Posts Tagged: Intimacy
The Plague within a Plague: Ethel Rohan’s In the Event of Contact
Rohan is masterful at mining these triads for their palpable uneasiness and unavoidable suffering.
...more
I’m Cold, Please Touch Me: The Freezer Door by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Sycamore wrote this book long before pandemic time, and yet it couldn’t have arrived at a better moment.
...more
Doublethink: A Conversation with Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston discusses his new poetry collection, DOPPELGANGBANGER.
...more
No Unnecessary Touching: A Conversation with C. Kubasta
C. Kubasta discusses her new collection, ABJECTIFICATION: STORIES & TRUTHS.
...more
What Is (and Isn’t) Held in the Light: Diane Zinna’s The All-Night Sun
Trauma’s wing conceals and reveals.
...more
This Huge, Colossal Joy: A Conversation with Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison discuss their work.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Tracy O’Neill
Tracy O’Neill discusses her new novel QUOTIENTS.
...more
Learning to Listen: A Conversation with Natalia Hero
Natalia Hero discusses her debut novella, HUM.
...more
What Toulouse-Lautrec Taught Me about Intimacy
I wanted to stop withholding from them, but withholding was like a drug.
...more
Traveler in Residence
Then a light turns on and a panic sets in, like noise: unassailable, unnameable.
...more
Language Is Material: A Conversation with Simon(e) van Saarloos
Simon(e) van Saarloos discusses PLAYING MONOGAMY.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #204: Paulina Flores
“Working with words is a quest, not blind, but in the darkness.”
...more
The Myth of the Lazy Mothers
I worried that I no longer knew myself.
...more
Love in the Belly of Beginning
I think this is what love is, critical and enduring.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #169: Saskia Vogel
“Understanding that you can have what you desire can be healing and transformative.”
...more
A Haunted Reality: Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It
The narration isn’t dispassionate, but there’s a distance.
...more
ENOUGH: If You Hadn’t Happened
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder discusses her debut novel, The Pisces (Hogarth, May 2018), the importance of love between women, and mermaid sex.
...more
Change Is Necessary: A Conversation with Kristen Arnett
Kristen Arnett discusses her debut collection, Felt in the Jaw, how place informs writing, and deciding to hold her book release party at a local 7-Eleven.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #123: Erica Garza
“[T]here was something really empowering about being honest and open about this part of myself. Somehow, writing helped lessen the shame.”
...more
Hooters Chicken
I applied for a job at Hooters on a dare a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday. A shoe salesman who worked across from me at the mall told me he’d pay me twenty dollars to apply.
...more
Embrace the Physical World: Touch by Courtney Maum
Touch is a compelling argument that we should embrace the physical world, genuine human connections, and reject the technology that comes between us and other people.
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Cost of Intimacy
Chasing intimacy can feel cheap—and yet intimacy we pay for can be meaningful. I find traditional therapy as awkward as sex, exposing my emotional self like I expose my body.
...more
Trail’s End
“This must be where we meander,” I said with relief. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
...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 […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Bruce Bauman
Bruce Bauman discusses his latest book, Broken Sleep, why rock isn’t dead (yet), how humor makes life bearable, and why we should reinstate the draft.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Garth Greenwell
Garth Greenwell discusses his debut novel, What Belongs to You, crossing boundaries, language as defense, and the queer tradition of novel writing that blurs boundaries between fiction and essay and autobiography.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Words Fail
Martha Bayne runs away with the circus and finds unexpected meaning in the effort required to achieve its gaudy display. “Can it really be escapism,” she asks, “if you’re working so hard?”
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The (Online) Stories We Tell
Sometimes you want to dream about the life you didn’t get to have. Sometimes you want to see the life you were lucky to escape.
...more