kafka
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In Between the In-Between: Talking with Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang discusses her story collection Sour Heart, trying to escape the past, collective versus individual responsibility for trauma, and love as imprisonment.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #94: David Burr Gerrard
David Burr Gerrard’s new novel The Epiphany Machine is one of the more ambitious books you’ll read this year, centering on a device that can reveal the epiphany of your life by tattooing the words onto your arm. “ABANDONS WHAT…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #85: Elizabeth Metzger
I have known the poet Elizabeth Metzger since kindergarten—and ever since I have known her, she has been a poet. When we played the The Game of Life, a board game, she wrote small lyrics about the futures we ended…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview #80: Jon Raymond
Jon Raymond is one of Portland’s finest wordsmiths. His writing spans TV, film, short story, novel, art criticism, and a hefty array of magazine work. His new novel, Freebird, is the story of a Californian Jewish family entangled in clashing…
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Paul Madonna Moves on to the Next Dream
We are excited to offer a preview of artwork from Paul Madonna’s new book, On to the Next Dream, alongside an interview with our current Comics Editor, Brandon Hicks, and an exclusive excerpt.
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Weekly Geekery
Harry Potter reduces prejudice towards immigrants. Why facts don’t change your mind. Kafka (unsurprisingly?) had insomnia. A new clue in the great German crime drama of 1694. Hands-free typing with your brain: now a thing.
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Leopard Print
I couldn’t believe there could be a famous book that was so radically unsatisfying. I remember thinking, how can he even be a famous author if he fucks you over this badly? It just seemed like a disaster. At the…
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The Rumpus Interview with Max Ritvo
Max Ritvo passed away on August 23, 2016. Earlier this summer, he spoke with Sarah Blake about his debut collection Four Reincarnations, writing with and about cancer, and how language is a game.
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Stranger Than Fiction
I read the Assistant Warden’s e-mail four or five times, but I still could not grasp its implications. All I could think about was the ten copies of Toni Morrison’s Beloved I had just bought. For Lit Hub, Mikita Brottman…
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Women and Workplace Fiction
Over at the New Yorker, Lydia Kiesling writes about workplace fiction, typically seen as a male-centric dominion overseen by writers like Kafka, as written by women from Helen Phillips in The Beautiful Bureaucrat to Terry McMillan in How Stella Got…
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You Keep Using That Word
I do not think it means what you think it means: Do words mean what the dictionary says they mean, or do they gain meaning through the way we use them? Any person without an agenda knows the answer is…
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Drawing a Line
Because borders are so weird, words proliferate. Along with arbitrary, nonsensical violence—and strange, unpredictable exceptions—people talk a lot and lots of papers get filed, even as all of it is, in practice, evacuated of meaning. For The New Inquiry, Aaron…