Rumpus Original Fiction: The Next Unicorn
My job was to help people suspend disbelief.
...moreMy job was to help people suspend disbelief.
...moreYou want to live by your ideals, but it’s hard to make them align with reality.
...moreLearning to read a landscape can reveal a deep history.
...moreIt comes down to this: I feel the need to prove I belong here.
...moreI was finally going to fit in in this foreign country.
...more“To really write, I need to hold a pen.”
...moreLiz Prato discusses her essay collection VOLCANOES, PALM TREES, AND PRIVILEGE.
...moreMaggie Downs discusses her debut memoir, BRAVER THAN YOU THINK.
...moreWhat was I now? A witness? A victim? A mother? A suspect?
...moreSam Farahmand discusses his debut novel, CHIMERO.
...moreXu Xi discusses her new essay collection, THIS FISH IS FOWL.
...moreThis thrill that comes with being on the precipice of possibility runs rampant throughout Make It Scream, Make It Burn.
...moreElizabeth Geoghegan discusses her debut story collection, EIGHTBALL.
...moreStanding alone before the house, I think: love can be a sad, strange thing.
...moreAs if he had just made a decision, Max said, “Drop me at Red Square.”
...moreAdrian Todd Zuniga discusses his debut novel, COLLISION THEORY.
...moreRolff Potts discusses his new book, Souvenir, the mythological element of souvenir collecting, and the inevitability of mortality.
...more[T]o be a tourist in a foreign country is very different than being a tourist in a foreign country where you are expected to feel you have returned home.
...moreOne thing I was taught about travel—because my father is a black man born in Alabama in 1950—was that there are safe places for black people to go and places that aren’t as safe.
...moreFaith Adiele discusses what it means to be a good literary citizen, the importance of decolonizing travel writing, and how she wants to change the way Black stories are being told.
...moreDanielle Trussoni discusses her new memoir, The Fortress, black magic, the cult of marriage, and the dark side of storytelling.
...moreI 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 of her ambition, shrewdness, and intellectual generosity was evident. After her first book debuted in […]
...moreAbeer Hoque talks about coming of age in the predominantly white suburbs of Pittsburgh, rewriting her memoir manuscript ten times, and looking for poetry in prose.
...moreI felt unhinged in my moments of isolation, and frustrated in my muteness.
...moreThe threat of perfunctory conversation looms. Raza reaches for his headphones, but it is too late. The man is already talking to him.
...moreClarence Major discusses his new collection Chicago Heat and Other Stories, the artist’s role in politics, Donald Trump and race relations, and Paris in the good old days.
...moreWelcome 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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