teenagers
-
Colorama
How does one scene impress itself on us, so that we remember it better than we should if we were in it? Or rest, just below the surface, present, but unnoticed?
-
Flannel-Soaked Nostalgia
Is there any fabric more well-loved than flannel? At Vela Magazine, Sonya Huber discusses the significance wearing flannel had to her teenage self in the 1980s Midwest: Flannel hid the shape of a woman, yet it revealed as we pushed…
-
Rumpus Original Fiction: Monkey Men
Still lying on the bed in the Wausau hotel room, I started counting ceiling tiles. From above the covers. Not under. Never under. I always feel constricted, under.
-
The Name Before My Name
There are times when I must uncork the period, for Isabel only chases my given name.
-
This Week in Short Fiction
It’s July, and the summer issues of literary magazines are rolling off both the physical and cyber presses, including Virginia Quarterly Review, which this week shared a story from its summer print issue online. In “Dixon” by Bret Anthony Johnston,…
-
A Ringing in Your Ears That Would Disappear by Morning
Soon, you would discover the local isle of misfits. Every town has at least one if you do some digging. Yours was The Boathouse.
-
Songs of Our Lives: Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City”
When people asked what I was going to do after high school, I said, “Leave town.” I wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t applied to a single college.
-
Salt
Now, nothing is ever quite salty enough for you. You have been caught shaking salt onto your bread at fancy restaurants, tonguing the rim of your margarita in order not to waste even a grain.
-
The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Louise Erdrich
The esteemed author talks about the themes of justice, atonement, and reparation in her fifteenth novel, LaRose, and about the importance of Planned Parenthood to her success.
-
Rumpus Original Fiction: On Documentation
What is it like to be you? he was always asking, in his way, and it seemed a stupid question then. I didn’t know. I could lie better than I could tell the truth. I hadn’t left yet.
-
Ramona Quimby All Grown Up
Beverly Cleary guided generations of girls and boys alike through the rocky, messy, color- and dream-filled days of childhood with her long-running Ramona series, which manages to stay at the forefront of the children’s literary scene even fifty years after the…
-
A Sandy In Rizzo’s Clothing
At The Toast, Mara Wilson discusses her relationship with Grease, Sandy, and Rizzo as a kid who wanted to believe the movie was an accurate portrayal of being a teenager: Months before I saw Grease, I had cut my hair…