A Note from our ADOPTEE AWARENESS special issue editor, Lauren J. Sharkey:
November is recognized as National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM). Often, initiatives executed during this month are meant to raise awareness regarding adoption-related issues, and to celebrate the formation of families through adoption. However, these efforts--in addition to the discourse surrounding adoption at large--often neglect to include an important voice . . . the adoptee voice.
As a transracial adoptee myself, I am proud to be supported by The Rumpus in reclaiming National Adoption Awareness Month as National Adoptee Awareness Month by publishing essays about the adoptee experience, written by adoptees. Elevating the voices and experiences of fellow adoptees is a mission of mine, and it is a privilege to do so.
The selected essays are raw, unrelenting, and painfully honest at times. They seek to challenge the dominant adoption narrative, and to provide insight into the lasting effects of relinquishment trauma. These essays, and their writers, will be sure to stay with you.
Thank you to all the adoptees who submitted their essays for consideration. I hope you continue to share your stories. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to our 7 featured essay writers this month: Charmaine Arjoonlal, Michael Todd Cohen, Debbie DeWall, Michael Montlack, Na Mee, Kimberly Rooney, and Maery Rose. Thank you for entrusting me with their work, and for sticking with me on this project. And lastly, thank you to The Rumpus for constantly being a champion of underrepresented voices.
Please look out for these pieces, along with our usual original fiction, poetry, book reviews, comics, and more, throughout the month.
--Lauren J. Sharkey, Rumpus Essays Editor and author of An Inconvenient Daughter |
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New Poetry & Columns
From the Archives Rumpus Original Fiction: "Of Birds Alit in Trees" by Hala Alyan
"Her name is Selvakumari, but the name catches like a vine in the family’s mouth, comes out bungled and limp. They call her Sally." |
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Interviews & Reviews
Yasmin Roshanian interviews Taymour Soomro about Letters to a Writer of Color
"How do you work out what the writer is trying to do in their piece—and support them to do it—as opposed to imprinting or superimposing your own vision...?"
Clarice Lispector's The Apple in the Dark, reviewed by Helen Ruby Hill
"Lispector’s stylistic feats enchant through to the end, and offer a compelling perspective on the wild magic of her voice."
Angela Tucker interviewed by Yvonne Liu about You Should be Grateful
"It’s such an emotionally charged topic that people often feel personally attacked when asked to think differently, even if there’s no real threat."
Julie R. Enszer reviews Six New Poetry Collections
"These gender interrogations interest me. How is poetic form being adapted, altered, and reimagined in contemporary lesbian and queer poetry?"
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Greg Mania's next desk for his Instagram Live Show Us Your Desk segment belongs to none other than Minda Honey!
Minda is the author of HEARTBREAK YEARS, her debut memoir, a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time. Minda's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads and has been featured in several anthologies.
She is the editor of Black Joy at Recko, was the director of the BFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University, a relationship advice columnist for LEO Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky, and founder of the capsule project, TAUNT, an alt-indie publication for Louisville that elevated the voices of the unaccounted during the height of the pandemic and ended in late 2021.
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, November 7 at 3pm PST / 6pm EST and follow The Rumpus on Instagram! |
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Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB:
Auction by Quan Barry x Pitt Poetry Series |
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For our September 2023 - August 2024 selections (and possibly beyond!), we’ll focus on great new poetry collections AND hear from the indie publishers behind the books with our new Indie x Indie Poetry Book Club format!
Join by midnight November 15th, to receive our December Poetry Book Club pick Auction by Quan Barry and join our subsciber-only conversation with author Quan Barry, Nancy Krygowski, member of the Pitt Poetry Series interim editorial committee, and Brian Spears, Rumpus Poetry Editor.
As a subscriber, we'll send you a copy of this book the first week of October and you'll also be invited to an exclusive online video discussion with the book's author + the author's editor + a Rumpus Editor and fellow book club members. Subscribers are encouraged to join in the chat with their questions before and during the conversations. These will take place on the Rumpus' Crowdcast channel and will remain available to subscribers for 1 month after they take place.
About November's Poetry Book Club selection: In Auction, her first poetry collection in eight years, the poet, novelist, and playwright Quan Barry travels the globe in her signature quest into the existential nature of experience. These poems explore the inner landscapes of both the human and animal realms, revealing them to be points along the same spectrum.
“Barry risks the lurid, and the knowing, but comes out more like a prophet, overwhelmed—sometimes sublimely so—by the first- and second-hand truths she must convey.” —Publisher's Weekly
About December's featured indie press: The University of Pittsburgh Press is a publisher with distinguished lists in a wide range of scholarly and cultural fields. They publish books for general readers, scholars, and students. Their renowned Pitt Poetry Series represents many of the finest poets active today, as reflected in the many prestigious awards their work has garnered over the past four decades. In addition, the Press is home to the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and, in rotation with other university presses, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. They also sponsor the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which recognizes the finest collective works of short fiction available in an international competition. |
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| Interested in advertising in The Rumpus e-newsletter or on therumpus.net? Contact Monica at ads@therumpus.net. |
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| PORTLAND, OR: November 2, 2023
ROSE CITY BOOK PUB
Doors open at 6:30 pm, readings begin at 7:15 pm PDT
Join Curbstone Books and The Rumpus for an inspiring evening of readings featuring authors Omar El Akkad, Jennifer Fliss, Elisa Gonzalez, Perry Janes, Sebastián Páramo, and Jane Wong. Hosted by Rumpus Editors-at-large Marisa Siegel and Marissa Korbel. This event is open to the public and is an official Portland Book Festival 2023 Cover to Cover event. This event is pay-what-you-can. Suggested $15-$20 / donation. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. All proceeds will be split evenly between the 6 readers and 2 host organizations (The Rumpus & Curbstone) to help with costs related to organizing and preforming at this event. Please RSVP to secure your spot. |
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| ONLINE: November 16
RUMPUS CROWDCAST CHANNEL
5 PM PST / 8 PM EST
Join The Rumpus and Kitchen Table Literary Arts on November 16 at 5pm PST / 8pm EST on The Rumpus's Crowdcast channel for an evening of powerful readings by Rumpus Voices on Addiction contributors Nilsa Ada Rivera, Iris (Yi Youn) Kim, Jasmin Lankford, Vanessa Mártir, and Heather Stokes. This event is curated and hosted by Kitchen Table Literary Arts Founder Sheree Greer and Kelly Thompson, The Rumpus's Voices on Addiction Editor. This event will celebrate the collaboration between our two organizations and our effort to increase the visibility of women writers of color and their stories across the spectrum of addiction.
Suggested donation of $20. Pay what you can (including $0 if you need to), no one turned away due to lack of funds. Proceeds will be divided equally between the 2 host organizations---Kitchen Table Literary Arts and The Rumpus. |
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| Letters in the Mail (from authors!) |
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Letters in the Mail from authors is a Rumpus subscription in which you receive an actual, postmarked letter from one of our favorite writers in your IRL mailbox twice a month. All letters are non-promotional, include a creative prompt, and have a return mailing address in case you'd like to write the author back!
Up next, author letters from . . .
November 15: Jami Nakamura Lin is the author of the speculative memoir The Night Parade (illustrated by her sister Cori Nakamura Lin), which will be published on October 24, 2023 by Mariner Books / HarperCollins. Her work interrogates mythology, monstrosity, madness, and motherhood, and is influenced by Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan folklore. (subscribe by November 14)
December 1: Julian Randall is the author of Refuse, winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, as well as the middle grade novel Pilar Ramirez And The Escape from Zafa, and The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: Essays. His writing has been published in New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY, and anthologized in Black Boy Joy, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, and Furious Flower. |
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Reader Support Keeps The Rumpus Going! |
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| Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, CA and now based in Asheville, NC with readers and editors all over the US and abroad, The Rumpusis one of the longest-running independent online literary and culture magazines. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Often, we are an emerging writer's first notable publication, which is something we’re really proud of. We believe that literature builds community—and if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Our Membership and subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, help keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability. |
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