The Fraught Business of Identity: Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know
All You Can Ever Know insists that the stories we use to understand ourselves should be allowed as much complexity as the truth dictates.
...more
Posts Tagged: Oregon
This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstores news from across the country and around the world!
...more
Voices on Addiction: Flight Patterns
There was no map, no compass. Just me, the needle, and heroin.
...more
This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...more
I Can’t Shake the Guru Bhagwan
In 1979, my mother decided she wanted to join Bhagwan’s ashram in Pune, India.
...more
A Book with Wings: Bird Book by Sidney Wade
There is an acceptance of the strangeness of things in these poems, even a generosity big enough to invite the oracle in for dinner.
...more
Living Proof: A Review of Wild Wild Country
The story of Rajneeshpuram is told in a series of events and everything within it is true. But it is not real. It does not come alive.
...more
To Look for America: A Road Trip, a Soundtrack
One thing I was taught about travel—because my father is a black man born in Alabama in 1950—was that there are safe places for black people to go and places that aren’t as safe.
...more
Cowboy or Terrorist? Harney County and the Trump Presidency
One person’s freedom to do anything they want can mean the absolute negation of another’s freedom.
...more
It’s Never Too Late to Be Found: A Conversation with Rene Denfeld
Rene Denfeld discusses her latest book, The Child Finder, the ways in which trauma traps us, and the important role of imagination in finding resilience and escape.
...more
My End of the World at Rajneeshpuram
I used to play a game with myself: who should die first, me or daddy? When I was very little, I could never come up with a good answer.
...more
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #84: Susan DeFreitas
Picture this: a curbside juggler with a rose between his teeth. That’s the opening image of Susan DeFreitas’s powerful debut novel, Hot Season. Vivid (and sometimes strange) images strike again and again, conjuring ponderosa pines, cafés, old houses, and new characters. The book is firmly set in the fictional town of Crest Top, Arizona, and […]
...more
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 politics, unspoken histories, and personal dissolve. The Singers are Holocaust survivor Sam, his contemptuous children, […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Great Elk
For a moment, seeing the small figures walking before the elk makes me think that white people know the Great Elk too.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Alice Mattison
Alice Mattison discusses her newest book, The Kite and the String, a meditation on her lifelong journey through the craft of writing, the joys of teaching writing, and the importance of community.
...moreSteering Clear of “McMagic”
At the New Yorker, an elegant and comprehensive essay by Julie Phillips from a visit with Ursula Le Guin at her home in Portland, Oregon touches on the importance of place, both geographic and imaginative. Phillips writes, “[Le Guin] has always defended the fantastic, by which she means not formulaic fantasy or “McMagic” but the imagination […]
...more
Boyz n the Hood, Chi-Raq, and America 2016
And while the faces and nomenclature between these historically discrete agents of change differ, the one governing commonality remains the same: unfettered gun ownership and correlative violence play a pivotal role.
...more
I Hear the Place That Can’t Be Named
It is remembering and loving anyway—not forgetting—that binds us even if the recollections are absurd, undignified, cruel, or humiliating.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Deborah Reed
Author Deborah Reed discusses her latest novel, Olivay, the necessity of fire, Los Angeles anxiety, and how she found fulfillment at the edge of the American West.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Benjamin Percy
Benjamin Percy discusses his latest novel, The Dead Lands, why it’s all about keeping language fresh, and his dream job writing for DC Comics.
...more
Highway 18
It’s always the doe protecting a fawn in the woods that stomps a passerby to death.
...more
Inner Resources
To stop yourself from killing yourself, you stir things up a bit. Change your basic weather patterns. Find the ocean inside of you.
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Fat Girl’s Benediction
Why couldn’t I accept my body for what it wanted to be? It’s what I harped on the rest of the world to do.
...moreThe Rumpus Original Combo with Keith Scribner
Novels explore the lives of particular people in particular places to reveal truths about human nature in general and insights into who we all are.
...moreRefresh, Refresh
A new graphic novel translates Benjamin Percy’s short story about children of the Iraq war into brilliant color.
...more