Rumpus Original Fiction: The Tangible Darkness
The ground trembles, setting his flesh and bones vibrating.
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Posts Tagged: Soldiers
Rumpus Exclusive: “Seoul”
It took them almost two weeks to walk to Seoul, such was their pace.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Ayşe Papatya Bucak
Ayşe Papatya Bucak discusses her debut story collection, THE TROJAN WAR MUSEUM.
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Marine Base Alchemy
We drive out, shedding tears inside, only for ourselves, only for the beauty.
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Finding the Inside Story: A Conversation with Paul Crenshaw
Paul Crenshaw discusses his debut essay collection, THIS ONE WILL HURT YOU.
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Any War, Every War: Checkpoint by David Albahari
Individual soldiers become a formless mass. War becomes an end in itself.
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War Games: Kill Class by Nomi Stone
What happens when we play along with something not real—does it become real?
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Iron Heart”
Speech seemed like an irreverence, as if the empty schools were tombs.
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Wisdom Is a Double-Edged Sword: Talking with Jay Baron Nicorvo
Jay Baron Nicorvo discusses his debut novel, The Standard Grand, how easy it is for civilians to forget about soldiers and veterans, and his longstanding love of animals.
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On the Front Lines
When you pick up a pen instead of a rifle, you’re fighting an entirely different battle. This is my duty. This is my patriotism.
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Unbridled Power in All Its Majestic Terror: Will Bardenwerper’s The Prisoner in His Palace
As we begin our own Age of the Strongman, Hussein’s almost effortless manipulation—of soldiers expecting exactly that behavior—shows how susceptible we all might be to the sheer force of a big personality.
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The Strangely Plausible Abyss of American War
In Akkad’s dystopian scenario, the US faces a resurgent Mexico and a vast and newly powerful North African-Arabian empire.
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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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Sand Becoming Glass
You can call a soldier a hero or a murderer. You can call them a warrior or a monster. You can call them savior or Satan. You could call them Brother. Maybe even mother.
...moreThis Week in Books: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir
Welcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice. If we’re going to move our national narrative away from […]
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 7): “Facing It”
There should be no forgetting, much less forgiveness, of what happened during the Vietnam War.
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The Rumpus Interview with Whitney Terrell
Whitney Terrell discusses war, gender, and fiction vs. reality in his new novel, The Good Lieutenant, about a female soldier in Iraq.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, Guernica has a new story from author and veteran Odie Lindsey, whose debut story collection about soldiers coming home from war, We Come to Our Senses, will be published by W.W. Norton later this month. Included in the collection, “Bird (on back)” picks up in the middle of a disintegrating relationship between an […]
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War Narratives #7: Turning a Corner
As we sat around telling the funniest stories we could remember from our time in Iraq, I noticed that the easy cynicism of our twenties was gone, and so was the rigid hierarchy of the military.
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A Letter to My Father That He Will Never Read
What would I even say if I was to answer that long-awaited phone call? Would the light of forgiveness carry me fearlessly into tomorrow?
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War Narratives #4: Meet the Civilians
Each character achieves independence in his own way, but independence winds up looking a lot like loneliness.
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The Rumpus Interview with Adam Johnson
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Adam Johnson talks about his new book, Fortune Smiles, fiction and voice, veterans and defectors, solar-powered robots and self-driving cars, and infrared baseball caps that can blind security cameras.
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War Narratives #3: The Rumpus Interview with Matt Gallagher
Matt Gallagher on blogging during his time in the Army, his memoir Kaboom and forthcoming novel Youngblood, and what makes for good literary fiction about wartime.
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War Narratives #2: Trauma Writing
[I]f we don’t explore wartime trauma in literature, we will never understand war’s impact in personal or social terms; never understand the incredible variety of responses to trauma, with all its nuances and exceptions.
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War Narratives #1: Truth and Fiction
The notion that the truth about combat cannot be described in a book goes back to the American Civil War, at least.
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Rapid Fire
Stanton re-gathered himself, still wearing a smile after being shot in the face, and went back to work.
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Bedrooms of the Fallen by Ashley Gilbertson
I lost my photo. Part of it, anyway. I lost some of the painless pride of ownership, the selfish satisfaction of creation.
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