The Butter
-
Redemption Through Story
Antonia Crane writes at The Butter about how addiction and recovery stories saved her: I heard stories exactly like mine from men and women who were nothing like me at all, except we had stopped doing the thing that was killing…
-
This Week in Short Fiction
There is a common rule in fiction writing that you should never write about dreams. It’s engraved in stone right next to “burn all adverbs.” Dreams are a lazy way to show action that doesn’t happen, or even worse, to…
-
Short, Sweet, and Simple
Roxane Gay recounts a few pithy and poignant lessons she learned from Ina Garten for The Butter.
-
Guns and Relatives
While we wait for his partner, George teaches us some U.S. history. How the “Indians weren’t doing much with their land anyway” and that today’s rednecks and hillbillies are the descendants of prisoners dumped here to be the newfound nation’s…
-
On Sisters, Love, and Rage
Sometimes I envy Absalom. He had recourse. He had power. He raised up an army in his rage. He did something. He turned his rage into an insurrection. All I’ve ever done is turn my anger into words. How can…
-
Fat and Sexy
My curves are not in all the right places but they still bring men to their knees. This, despite the fact that I have been told that because I am fat I can’t expect to be loved, desired, to have…
-
Loosen the Reins
To an outside observer, it might appear that my father approached death the same way he did life: With a heavy hand and a critical gaze. It may seem like his pride and stubbornness made something difficult — dying —…
-
Of Bacon and Transgression
On The Butter, Syed Ali Hader writes about his complicated relationship with pork: I thought I would be found out. It was in my hair, my nails, and sweating through my pores. Surely my parents could smell it on me.…
-
Like Butter on Toast
The Butter, The Toast’s new vertical run by Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay, has just launched. To present her latest venture, Gay wrote a Butter FAQ, stretching, in her typical style, from submission guidelines (spoiler: no guidelines!) to Nick Jonas,…
-
Roxane Gay Will Butter The Toast
Rumpus Essays Editor Emeritus Roxane Gay will helm a new Internet vertical being launched by The Toast. The Butter will primarily include content drawn from submissions, although Gay herself plans on posting two to three times a week. Contributors will be…