Death and Rebirth: Armenians in Jerusalem
When I was young, my grandma told me that Armenians are distant descendants of Noah.
...more
Posts Tagged: North Carolina
This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...more
Racism Shouldn’t Be Shocking: Toppling American Myths
Let us teach something new to the next generation that speaks to the lessons we’ve learned.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #125: Tyree Daye
“I think if you are really doing the work, you can’t write about America and not explore race and slavery, and that goes for any writer.”
...more
I Dated Bad Men Till a Bad Man Became President
Their dishonesty and danger was easier to look past then. The world had not yet shifted. But then it did, and I woke up.
...more
The Miracle Bowl
Praise the family that tethers me. Praise the well-used kitchen utensils and scoured mixing bowls and butter knives, thick slabs of jelly on the bread.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #23: The Love Song for Argyle C. Klopnik
File this one under “they can’t Trump everything; life goes on.” Last week, I got caught up in reflections on poverty in America: mine, yours, and ours. This week, I decided to do something about it and buckle down to design a careful budget. “Ack!,” I said, early one morning. “We’ve got to make a budget […]
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Butch and the Bathroom
Then there is the bathroom issue. My beloved is like me, like you, like anyone. Sometimes a person has to go.
...more
War Narratives #8: Flashes of War by Katey Schultz
Schultz enables readers to see past their own perspectives and empathize with both the Afghan child and the American war widow.
...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #12: What Is Safety?
Oh better far to live and die Under the brave black flag I fly Then play a sanctimonious part With a pirate head and a pirate heart!! –The Pirates of Penzance At fifteen years old, I was a runaway. It was perhaps 9:30 at night, my first night out, having hitchhiked a couple of hundred […]
...moreTouring Trump’s America on Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award on Wednesday night. In his acceptance speech he told us, “We’re happy in here; outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland of Trumpland. Be kind to everybody. Make art and fight the power.” Not only was this apt for the evening, but it also describes the […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Rich Ferguson
Rich Ferguson discusses his debut novel New Jersey Me, moving to the Garden State from the South as a kid, and how music has influenced his writing.
...more
This Week In Indie Boosktores
A century-old Greek bookstore has closed due to the debt crisis. Colleges are giving up on campus bookstores, sending students to Amazon instead. You too could start your own bookstore.
...more
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Thao Nguyen’s Release
The thing I want to talk about is something I’m not in possession of anymore, but of all the things I’ve lost it’s the thing I think about the most.
...more
Rumpus Original Fiction: State Facts for the New Age
“I’m a shock absorber for tragedy,” I say, not really knowing what I mean. “Maybe I should just move to Hawaii. I hear that’s a happy place to live.”
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
The next victim of Amazon’s physical stores will be Chicago. If Los Angeles is having a literary renaissance, it is happing at The Last Bookstore. A bookstore in Tampa pokes fun at Amy Schumer poking fun at Tampa.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Sara Benincasa
Comedian Sara Benincasa opens up about her latest book Real Artists Have Day Jobs, adjusting to success, Venn-diagramming love, and the loss of Morley Safer.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Garrard Conley
Garrard Conley, author of the new memoir Boy Erased, discusses growing up in the deep South, mothers, writing for change, and political delusions.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Brian Blanchfield
Poet and writer Brian Blanchfield talks about his essay collection Proxies, touring in support of a prose collection versus a poetry collection, and frottage.
...more
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Laura Ballance’s Ghost Stories
There is one story that my mother used to tell me often, which has become in some ways a symbol of my childhood.
...moreThe Fight Against North Carolina’s HB2
Following in The Boss’s footsteps, many musicians are speaking out against North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill,” which bans trans men and women from using bathrooms of a gender other than that listed on their birth certificates. Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam, Boston, Ani DiFranco, Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas have cancelled shows scheduled in North Carolina in […]
...moreAll About Banned Books
Americans love banning books, and the winners of this year’s most banned books have been announced by the American Library Association. John Green’s young adult novel Looking for Alaska takes the top spot, keeping Green in the top ten. He was joined this year by the Bible. Other big winners on the top ten list […]
...moreBruce Springsteen Protests Bathroom Law
Springsteen has cancelled scheduled concerts in North Carolina in what he called “the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.” The law bans transgender citizens from using a bathroom that does not match the gender on their birth certificate and curtails their […]
...more
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Benji Hughes’s Pareidolia
Love is irrational and it’s supernatural. It’s also probably what we want/need most.
...more
What We Want Now
Near the end of my Disney tenure, I filched a Magic Music Days sign from the Epcot entrance and hands shaking, brought it to a tattoo artist.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jeremy Hawkins
Author Jeremy Hawkins discusses his debut novel, The Last Days of Video, the resurgence of the independent bookstore industry, and allowing nostalgia to have presence but not precedence in one’s life.
...moreGrieving, Not Grammar
In a little more than two weeks, in a Hospice unit tucked away at the edge of the Atlantic, in Brunswick, North Carolina, a free grief-writing workshop will be held. When Vonnegut urged his students to “write a poem, tear it up,” he stressed the value of art, as such, apart from readership and representation. […]
...moreInvisible Man Gets A Little More Invisible
The Raw Story’s Arturo Garcia reports that Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man has been banned from school libraries and reading lists in Randolph County, North Carolina. After a parent decried the book as “not so innocent,” the school board voted 5–2 to ban it, declaring it “a hard read” without “any literary value.” How wonderful that […]
...more