personal essay
-
Reflecting on Penance
Sunday Rumpus editor Gina Frangello has a beautiful essay over at The Manifest-Station (run by Rumpus Contributor Jennifer Pastiloff) that reflects back on her days dealing with anxiety, an eating disorder, and getting out. “In an Afterschool Special, the crazy…
-
Of Love and Loss
For Guernica, Boyer Rickel offers us raw reflections on love and disease after losing his partner in “Morgan: A Lyric.” You don’t realize how much nothing is until you have nothing, says a woman in Oklahoma whose house burned down. Love…
-
Women Speaking Up
For Slate, Amanda Hess reports on a boom in the publication of personal essays about women’s issues like rape, abortion, or an eye-poppingly grotesque parasite infection that we’d rather remain ignorant of: These stories are emotionally electric, politically relevant, and powerfully…
-
Melissa Petro on The Writing Cure
Melissa Petro, whose Rumpus essay “Not Safe For Work” contributed to getting her fired from a teaching job, writes in this month’s The New Inquiry about what she calls “The Writing Cure”—how writing about traumatic or damning life events offers…