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weekend rumpus roundup

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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,…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…

  • Max Gray

    Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    First, 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…