| This week at The Rumpus and
Asheville, NC: Publisher's note on community |
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Dear Readers,
This week I'm sending along a more personal note along with highlighting the original pieces published on The Rumpus recently. If you're also a Rumpus member, you've seen a similar note from me yesterday. Please forgive me, I'm very very tired.
As you may or may not know, a few members of The Rumpus team (editor, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, store manager, Eric Carroll, and board member, Catherine Campbell) and I are based in Asheville, NC. We've considered the city The Rumpus's home base since January 2022, when I took on the magazine from my predecessor, Marisa Siegel.
We’re all safe and in touch with one another. Since Hurricane Helene hit last Friday, we've been without electricity and drinking water. Cell service was nonexistent, but it’s slowly coming back. If you need Wi-Fi in my neighborhood, you walk to the West Asheville Library—thank you LIBRARIES!—and stand in the parking lot. If you want to communicate with someone, you try to find them in person. Hopefully, you have gas, cash, and have filled your bathtub up with the water you'll need to flush the toilet or boil to drink. 7 days post-storm, the lights on our street began flickering back on again late last night. The celebration was audible!
I'm feeling anxious and sad for all the loss and unknowns. It could be weeks before we have clean drinking water again, and it will be YEARS before Asheville and many of our surrounding counties recover. |
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 | | Pictured: me and my neighbors removing a few of the downed trees on our block, so we had a way out of our street last Friday. We cleared things on our own to make the power company's work quicker once they arrived to repair the lines. |
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I’m also feeling wildly grateful for both our local community and everyone who has texted, emailed, or (tried to) call to check in on us. So many people have asked how they can help! It has been incredible to see our local community—especially our neighbors in West Asheville!—organize to support each other, provide services, and give aide while we wait for more outside help. People are making shared resource maps, providing community meals on the sidewalks, and coordinating welfare checks. It's incredible! There are a lot of fired-up people who will be adamantly insisting the city proactively plans for the undeniable consequences of climate change, and I'm hoping we all learn something from this. Mainly, what does it really mean to be a part of a community? How do we show up for each other ALL THE TIME and not just during a crisis? How do we care for things before they're destroyed?
So many people have asked what they can do to help. If you are a Member or Donor, you are helping The Rumpus already by supporting the magazine consistently. That's exactly what we ALL need: regular support and people we can count on.
I'd also like to make a few recommendations for Asheville specifically. These are local organizations who were doing the work on Day 1 of the storm and do great work in the community year-round. All are providing free meals and resources! Please note that a lot of wonderful organizations don't have the most navigable websites, because as we all know, you need FUNDING to have anything decent. Please consider donating to:
The Poverty Initiative / 12 Baskets. Donate online or Venmo @ashevillepovertyinitiative
Beloved Asheville or Venmo @BeLoved-Asheville
If you're looking for more resources and updates on local needs, cleanups, and organizing, our neighbors at Firestorm Books are helping now (and always).
If you have a friend or loved one affected by Helene in Asheville or any other area in Western North or South Carolina, Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, or hand them some money in person. If they can't use it, one of their neighbors can. No need to ask if they need help. THEY DO or know a person or an organization that does. There's a lot of good local folks filling in some huge gaps (like our Board Member, Catherine Campbell and contributor/former columnist Tessa Fontaine!) and going to places FEMA hasn't made it to yet.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for helping.
-Alyson Sinclair, Publisher
PS: If you ordered any mugs or posters from The Rumpus store recently, we hope you’ll understand that shipping is delayed. All our merch is stored at my house, which is just now getting power back! |
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New Essays & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "orange is thirsty" by Angélica Pina Lèbre
“It was larger than human. The carcass. The cracked clay. White on orange. Hot and dry. Nosebleed.”
Rumpus Original Column We Are More: Three Poems by Marlin M. Jenkins
“even after being wiped / up with a piece of toilet paper / one of the centipede’s legs / is left behind twitching” |
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Interviews & Reviews
Olivia Q. Pintair interviews Saba Keramati about Self-Mythology
“A myth is a story. A self is also a construction, often made by the telling of our own stories.”
Katrina Ray-Saulis reviews Shannon Reed's Why We Read
“Reed reminds us we don’t need to take our reader selves so seriously. We can simply have fun with books.”
Jennifer Wortman interviews Amy Stuber about Sad Grownups
“...I write almost by feel, like stacking up objects on a table, stepping back to assess how they look and feel in relation to each other, moving things around.”
Gina Thayer reviews Emilie Menzel's The Girl Who Became a Rabbit
“...amidst our grief, our light, our hybridity, we are constantly being formed anew. We are all of us trembling. How terrifying. How beautiful.” |
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| Partner announcement and special offer to Rumpus readers: |
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 | Join the Accountability Workshops led by Annie Hartnett (author of novels Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals) and Tessa Fontaine (former Rumpus columnist and author of the memoir The Electric Woman and the novel The Red Grove).
What you get:
Multi-faceted support. In addition to the bi-weekly meetings, Annie and Tessa provide . . . - One-on-one coaching anytime you need it, and help you craft a personalized writing contract.
- Connections and insights from the larger literary community with monthly guest speakers for inspiration (guests include: Steve Almond, Weike Wang, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Jonathan Escoffery, Marie-Helene Bertino, Hannah Pittard, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, agents, publicists, and more!
- Access to a Slack channel for staying in touch with your cohort and the larger community
- Zoom writing sessions
- Occasional real-life meetups! Members live all over the globe.
If you’ve always wanted a writing community or a writing coach, you’ll get BOTH!
The cost is $150/month, month-to-month commitment. Cancel anytime. Meetings are on Zoom, every other week: Mondays 1-2:30 pm ET, Wednesdays 1 -2:30 pm ET, and Wednesdays 8-9:30 pm ET.
And, as promised, there's a SPECIAL OFFER for Rumpus readers! Receive $25 off your first month with the code RUMPUS25.
To JOIN:
→ Sign up here, and start by creating an account.
→ Then, enter the discount code RUMPUS25 on the payment page for $25 off your first month.
**Special offer ends Nov. 1, 2024. Sign up now for the 1st month discount. Please note that The Rumpus isn't running these Accountability Workshops. All questions and any logistical support, should be directed to Annie and Tessa. |
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| What to Read When You Want to Get Lost |
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 | | "I was striving for a book about grief (and avoiding it). A book about the creative process (and avoiding it). As a species we’re highly skilled at the art of avoidance and sometimes that route takes us to the most interesting places. The books on this list either directly influenced Lesser Ruins or spoke to me in ways that, in hindsight, are as mysterious as the initial impulse is to create. " —Mark Huber, What to Read When You Want to Get Lost |
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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, an author letter from . . .
October 15: Bruna Dantas Lobato is a writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translation for The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel. Originally from Natal, Brazil, Dantas Lobato lives in Iowa and teaches at Grinnell College. Blue Light Hours is her debut novel. Subscribe by October 14! |
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| Available Now:
NEW TRAVEL MUGS!
*Please note we are currently experience shipping delays, all Rumpus merch (mugs and posters) is in Asheville, NC at our Publisher's home. We hope to have regular mail service in the next week or two. |
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 | | The NEW "Write Like a Motherfucker" travel tumbler is elegant and classy AF! This is your new grownup high quality 16 ounce insulated MiiR brand to-go mug. MiiR is a certified B-Corp, and we're basically selling these at cost. This tumbler handles hot and cold beverages equally well. It fits great in a cup holder and in your hand. Black powder coated with Rumpus red etching. It's the classic design by Walter Green. “Write Like a Motherfucker” is a quote from one of the most famous Dear Sugar columns by Cheryl Strayed.
*Annual Rumpus Members, a reminder to log into your store account, if you'd like to pre-order at a 20% discount. |
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| Submissions for Comics are open August 1 until October 31.
Submissions for Essays are open until October 31.
Two new columns, Collaborative Criticism and Close Reads are now open year-round!
Our new column Parallel Practice is open again for submissions. Read the call here before submitting.
We are open for Funny Women and Prose and Poetry Book Reviews submissions year-round.
Submissions for Poetry opened on Aug. 15 and closed on Aug. 19th, since we hit our 500 submissions limit in just four days.
(Reminder, annual Rumpus Members can submit their work in any genre all year long.) |
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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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