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Join NOW!First, in the Saturday Essay, Chelsea Hicks Bryan’s lyric essay “The Living Wound” remembers those who sacrificed, whose painful deaths fertilize the earth and our world around us to forever fill up the “diamond-faced young America” with ancestral beauty and wisdom. Then, faces turn into numbers and immigration documents into art in Jan-Henry Gray’s five poems […]
...moreFirst, shaky cultural bridges are strengthened through mourning in Lito Velázquez’s Saturday Essay, “A Taste of Something, Slowly Over Time.” Then, Brandon Hicks offers an illustrated early Valentine’s Day treat: true love and eternal happiness is churned out in the automated romantic experience of a lifetime. Finally, in the Sunday Essay, Beth Roddy recalls the rite of passages offered in […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, the search for love winds through cities and settles in unexpected spaces in Meghan O’Dea’s “Everything We Ever Needed.” Meanwhile, our very own Comics Editor Brandon Hicks shares “three things” from his drawing table in “Triple Bill.” Finally, Sunday Rumpus Poetry celebrates Gwendolyn Brooks’s centennial with four poems from Revise the […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Byron F. Aspaas bares his slowly healing scars of communities lost before they were found and countries-turned-battlefields to remind us that our transformations into our true selves are never complete. And the Rumpus Inaugural Poems project continues on this last weekend of freedom with “& who , this time” by Hanif […]
...moreFirst, Leila Aboulela examines time and its tricks in “Pinpricks” for the Saturday Rumpus Essay. And this weekend, we kicked off our Rumpus Inaugural Poems project with Leila Chatti’s eulogy for every mother’s lost country in “Motherland,” and Kaveh Akbar’s surreal images of reconstructionism in “Poem to a Conqueror.” Meanwhile, Brandon Hicks shares a very funny new comic, […]
...moreA very happy New Year from everyone at The Rumpus! First, in the Saturday Essay, Shamala Gallagher thinks about “what counts as truth” in the process of creating your own narrative during times of identity crisis. And in the Sunday Essay, Peggy Shinner captures a moment of disconnect between a family bound by history, lost in their […]
...moreWe hope you had a merry Christmas! Here’s a comic from Brandon Hicks on Santa vs. God. As Standing Rock quiets and the Water Protectors move to the next phase of resistance, Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. studies the wašíču, the fat-takers, on the other side of the divide in the Saturday Essay. And in […]
...moreFirst, Ruby Hansen Murray explores the surreal landscapes of historic Native American locations turned educational tourist hotspots in the Saturday Rumpus Essay, as she journeys with the Osage Nation Historical Preservation Department to Cahokia, the site of an ancient agrarian culture in now-Illinois, among camera-carrying tourists and young field-trippers. And this week in Sunday Rumpus […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Kaitlin Barker Davis lays bare the grief, and examines the imperfect, often bizarre language, that accompanies a “missed miscarriage.” And Brandon Hicks shares irreverent bits from his drawing board in “Misc.: Stray Thoughts.” Then, in the Sunday Essay, Piper J. Daniels recounts a perpetual search for Mother, a one-green-eyed, one-blue “Lady Lazarus” who haunts and […]
...moreIn this week’s Saturday Rumpus Essay, Terese Mailhot, our Saturday Rumpus editor, shares rallying words from Cherokee author Barbara Robidoux. Robidoux calls on us to stop walking our beaten trails and take a stand against faux “boy’s club” leaders. This powerful excerpt was originally spoken by Robidoux before a demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline. And, in Sunday […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Rumpus Essay, Casandra Lopez threads together the fragments of self-identity, the love of cars her father and brother were born with, and a lost soul. Through the retelling of the death of her younger brother, Lopez explores the lasting wounds it caused for her and for her family, and how it feels to be related to […]
...moreFirst, in Rumpus Saturday Fiction, Sherman Alexie’s shares three short stories—”Fixed Income,” “Honor Society,” and “Valediction”—that all offer his trademark whimsy and insight into the human condition. Three different teenagers struggle with poverty, endemic racism, and social exclusion, and must depend upon themselves to make the right choices in difficult moral situations. Then, in the […]
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks complicates stereotypes of the lower classes in a comic spoof of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his famous wife, Zelda. Then, in the Saturday Essay, Melissa Kingbird recounts her experience at Standing Rock, on the outskirts of a Native American reservation. Kingbird’s participation in the Native occupation of disputed land is punctuated by apocalyptic […]
...moreFirst, in Saturday Rumpus Poetry, Connie Voisine shares three new poems. Body shaming is the subject of “Shameful,” in which the speaker considers modeling herself after someone else, “like a person on TV,” but she only watches English programs “where actors have yellowish/teeth and red eyes.” The physical body, here, is “an artichoke.” Voisine exposes the […]
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks shares a special Halloween essay he’s illustrated for us. Meanwhile, in the Saturday Essay, Evan Lavender-Smith reveals takes a frank and humorous look at self-image. “Character Evan” is attractive, fit, responsible, and mature; a good husband and father. But “real Evan” experiences anxiety and self-doubt. The latter worries about the “heat death” of the universe and […]
...moreFirst, b: william bearheart shares a heart-wrenching and lyrical Saturday Essay on suicide, the struggle against depression and anxiety, and the role of poetry as an effective medicine. Hope and a hidden spirituality imbue a cliff, the site of many tragic suicides, with a complexity that lingers with the author. And in the Sunday Interview, Laurie […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Interview, Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp and Tommy Pico discuss Pico’s book-length poem, IRL, and its themes of temporality, Indiginous identity, and lyrical humor. IRL (which stands for ‘in real life’) reflects a “terrifying” and cathartic creative process in which Pico churned out new material four days a week and spent Fridays aggressively editing. Then, in […]
...moreFirst, Sasha LaPointe meditates on the “language of trauma” in the Saturday Essay. An abusive experience from her childhood manifests itself in strange images of floating boats, images that she struggles to express in writing. LaPointe delves into the psychology of dissociation and discovers a wellspring of strength coming from her Native heritage and its oral […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Philip Roughton translates Icelandic writer Oddný Eir’s mirage-filled meditation on coming-of-age. Eir describes haunting images that float beneath her consciousness and in her dreams. Then, Brandon Hicks illustrates the happy story of the girl who first created music. Finally, in the Sunday Essay, Louise LeBourgeois examines her childhood in New Orleans and its […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Interview, Helga Schimkat talks to author Eden Robinson about silencing the inner voice of criticism. Robinson, whose award-winning novel Monkey Beach is set in British Columbia, emphasizes the sensory and emotional role of home in her work, saying, “Writing about your community is difficult for any writer. The push and pull of representing your […]
...moreFirst, Chip Livingston recounts his transformational experiences with Reiki and alternative healing practices in the Saturday Essay. A shocking recording of a tarot reading empowers Livingston to feel hope again for his ailing lover, Ash, who is HIV positive. Then, Livingston learns a new way of healing at a Native American conference that complements his […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Kate Lebo looks back at her Seattle neighborhood, Ballard, in 2007, before gentrification. Recalling details about her neighbors’ homes lead Lebo to reevaluate a particular time in her life, as well as to experience nostalgia for a version of Ballard that no longer exists. Then, Debra Monroe takes aim at victim blaming […]
...moreFirst, Theo Pauline Nestor critiques the way “women are supposed to be” in the Saturday Essay—how they are supposed to look and act, particularly when in the company of men. A violating experience at a medical clinic leads Nestor to reconsider her own sexual history in light of male disapproval. In the process, she loses her “only […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Laura Da’ laments the near-eradication of the Shawnee language. Da’ provides a litany of broken treaties, each one an “artifact of unimaginable suffering,” and attempts to redefine the treaty for herself in today’s world. Then, industrious author Christine Sneed talks to Floyd Skloot in the Sunday Interview. Sneed looks back on […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Interview, Penny Perkins speaks with Ramona Ausubel about Ausubel’s latest novel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, her previous collections, and “the ways that stories change the real chemistry of the world.” Then, Jeff Lennon reviews Cynthia Cruz’s “swirling” fourth poetry collection, How The End Begins. A well-chosen order helps to keep the […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Naseem Jamnia considers memories, genetics, and what gets passed down from one generation to the next. She writes, “The brain is a curious, malleable thing, and just as cigarette smoke and alcohol can be tucked into a fetus, so can trauma. My mother’s experiences settled into her eggs and shaped […]
...moreFirst, the “luminous” poetry of Circe Maia takes center stage in the Saturday Interview. Chip Livingston talks to writer and teacher Jesse Lee Kercheval about her ongoing work translating Uruguayan poetry, much of which is written and performed in Montevideo, where “everyone is connected in one way or another.” Meanwhile, Brandon Hicks pokes fun at didactic barflies […]
...moreFirst, Michael Wasson’s imagistic prose poetry fills the Saturday Essay. Wasson’s dreamlike narrative describes a first day of school from his childhood. Wasson recalls the teacher taking attendance, calling out, “who’s missing?” The question launches a lyrical investigation of the author’s memory and identity. Then, Julie Marie Wade reviews the poetry collection Ghost/Landscape, a successful collaboration between Kristina Marie Darling and John […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Interview, Tyrese L. Coleman talks with author Leslie Pietrzyk about her award-winning 2015 collection, This Angel On My Chest, and its relationship with real life events. The author explains her approach to writing about personal tragedy, which is “to write the ‘true’ things until the truth wasn’t as interesting as what I could make up.” Meanwhile, in […]
...moreFirst, Michelle Marie Wallace chats with two Bay Area writers-turned-visual artists, Cristina García and Truong Tran, in the Saturday Interview. García and Tran share their inspirations and the impetus that led each to make visual art after spending many years developing their writing. Next, Jeff Lennon reviews Thomas Lux’s “terse” new collection, To the Left […]
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