short stories
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Summer of Families
“What do you think about this,” he said, measured and cool. “What if we offer a service where people can pay to be in our family, but only for a few hours.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Than Nguyen discusses his story collection The Refugees, growing up in a Vietnamese community in San Jose in the 1980s, and the power of secondhand memories.
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This Week in Short Fiction
This week, the bimonthly magazine of international literature World Literature Today released its March 2017 issue, with the timely theme “Dystopian Visions.” The issue features thirteen writers’ dark speculations on the future, crossing the globe from Cuba to Japan. In…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #73: Maggie Shipstead
I first met Maggie Shipstead in 2011 when she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She had not yet published her first novel, Seating Arrangements, which would later become a New York Times bestseller, but even then the magnitude…
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Sound & Vision: Leah Hayes
Allyson McCabe talks with Leah Hayes, acclaimed illustrator, graphic novelist, songwriter, and musician.
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The Mirror’s Shards
In the face of colossal and destructive political lies, we need a more nuanced understanding of the world than simply truth versus lie.
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The Rumpus Interview with George Saunders
George Saunders discusses his new (and first) novel Lincoln in the Bardo, Donald Trump, and a comprehensive theory of literature.
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This Week in Short Fiction
This week, Joyland has a new story from poet and fiction writer Joanna C. Valente about gender, sexual intercourse, and sexual violence. Their story, “You’re Gonna Scream When You Die,” opens with a scene that immediately backs up the dire…
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This Week in Short Fiction
This week, C Pam Zhang has a flash fiction story at The Offing that is maybe about vampires but probably about girls, Chinese girls in particular. “Are They Vampires, or Are They Just Chinese?” is written in five brief paragraphs…
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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.
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The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Yancy
Melissa Yancy discusses her debut story collection Dog Years, using her day job for inspiration, and being “an old curmudgeon at heart.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #69: Steven Schwartz
Steven Schwartz’s new book, Madagascar: New and Selected Stories, positively aches (often sighs, sometimes chuckles) with wisdom. Steven understands people. He understands why they do what they do, how they feel when they’ve done it, and he understands too how…