Politics
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Kathleen Rooney
Fiction is often a much-needed step back that gives you the distance to see things more clearly; it’s very often better at explaining why events happened as opposed to just what happened.
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The Strange Life of Dan Carter Beard
Dan Carter Beard wasn’t just one of the founders of Boy Scouts of America; he was also Mark Twain’s most trusted illustrator. Twain said of Beard’s work: Dan Beard is the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings for…
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Phillip P. Puckett: A Rumpus Roundup
Virginia State Senator Phillip P. Puckett, a Democrat, resigned on Monday. His resignation gives Republicans control of the state legislature. Puckett had planned on taking a new job as deputy of the state tobacco commission, an appointed position controlled by…
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Takin’ It to the Tweets
Last Friday, the CIA officially joined Twitter with a joke: We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet. But the New York Review of Books wasn’t laughing. The highly respected literary journal staged a protest, rapidly…
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Political Fiction, Without a Capital P
Political fiction can come across as heavy-handed, but avoiding all politics in writing may overlook the fact that people lead political lives. Over at the Atlantic, author Molly Antopol talks about how reading the fiction of Grace Paley taught her…
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Do Writers Also Have to Be Protesters?
Pankaj Mishra has always been a politically outspoken writer, so when Mo Yan, who has defended the Chinese government’s censorship, won the Nobel Prize, Mishra was the last person anyone expected to defend him. But he did, asking, “Do we…
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Lou Reed’s Discobiography
This week in The New Yorker, Nick Flynn writes a poem about Lou Reed. There have also been some other great articles about Lou Reed. “Discobiography” might sound like the title of a cheesy 70s memoir, but according to Erich Kuersten it’s…
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Oops, I’m Sorry
Thank you all for coming here today. It is with a heavy heart that I admit to my colleagues, to my constituents, and to the public, that I did indeed do that thing I was accused of doing. Boy did…
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Staving-off-Despair Roundup
When there’s an injustice as great a man walking free after killing an unarmed teenager, at least we have writing to turn to. Our essays editor Roxane Gay has done some of that writing for Salon in a piece about the George…
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Victories for Pro-Choicers, Gay Marriage; Defeat for Voting Rights
As you’re probably aware, we’ve been covering Texas’s grotesque anti-abortion bill SB5, and we’re overjoyed to report it did not pass. Texas State Senator (and now folk hero) Wendy Davis filibustered the bill for close to thirteen hours under the state…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Syria’s Poets Under Threat
The debate about political poetry in the United States sometimes has an arid feel to it. Essential, yes. But fatally so? Not very often. But poets caught up in violent political events are brethren. I believe it is essential for…
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The Rumpus Interview with Kitzia Esteva
A champion for immigrant rights, Kitzia Esteva talks about the fear and empowerment she embraced while on the UndocuBus, her work as a community organizer, and what Obama’s immigration policies mean to her.