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Interviews & Reviews
Erin Langner interviews Christine Ma-Kellams about The Band
“I’m just obsessed with causality—why people do what they do. I think subconsciously...I want to make sure that people understand how these characters became who they are.”
Colm McKenna reviews Through the Night Like a Snake
“...the best of the bunch offer a brand of horror that does away with allegory, pulling down the curtain and revealing the proximity between real life and terror.”
Aldo Amparán interviews Saúl Hernández about How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters
“My visceral imagery comes from my dreams. I am a very vivid dreamer. In many instances, I find myself in these surreal-like dreams...”
Kateri Kramer reviews Ross Gays's The Book of (More) Delights for Sketchbook Reviews
“It's the way Gay pays attention to the quiet moments in our everyday that I keep coming back to.”
Allison Armijo interviews Tajja Isen for The Rumpus Mini Interview
“...that’s the whole point of language as a structure of resistance—to disrupt the comfortable, anesthetic modes of narrative and argument.” |
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| Join by THIS Monday to attend the BONUS live sessions! |
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ICYMI we recently launched a new Rumpus offering: The Writer's Welcome Kit, a 5-week asynchronous course to establish your regular writing practice. This course was created by author and writing coach Paulette Perhach specifically for writers who are looking for a starting point as they begin to practice their craft in an intentional way. *Perhach's book, Welcome to the Writer's Life, was published in 2018 by Sasquatch Books / Penguin Random House and was selected as one of Poets & Writers' Best Books for Writers.
The version offered by The Rumpus has 51 lessons with corresponding projects as well as additional contributions on best practices, resources, and insights shared by our team.
If you're a beginning writer in any genre who would like guidance on establishing a dedicated writing practice OR any writer who wants to commit to an intentional routine, this course was built for you.
As a limited time BONUS offer to anyone who signs up by May 21, you'll be able to join a free online accountability classes offered on Wednesday evenings in May/June. See details below!
These live Zoom meetups will include drop-in visits from Rumpus Poetry Editor, Carolina Edeid, Fiction Editor, Reena Shah, and Editor-in-Chief, Aram Mrjoian. These editors will share insights into their personal writing practice and what they look for as editors for the magazine.
This accountability bonus offer won't be available on an ongoing basis, so sign up by May 21 if you're interested in this 2 for 1 deal.
Ready to start? |
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New Essays & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "Happy Birthday, I Love You" by Rebekah Bergman
“The following Thursday, while watching the baby, Denver felt himself shrink once more. He thought something was wrong with his bones. He might need more calcium, he decided...”
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Interested in volunteering with The Rumpus? Applications are now open for two roles. We are looking to expand our book reviews teams, and we'll be bringing on two new prose and two new poetry book reviews editors soon.
If you're interested in joining our team, learn more about the position and apply at the links above! We're accepting applications now through Friday May 31. |
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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 . . .
June 1: Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Mississippi. His writing appears in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, Marvel Comics, and the Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duet (Holt Books for Young Readers), The Chainbreakers (HBYR, 2024) and The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books, 2024). He can be found at @JulianThePoet and on his website JulianDavidRandall.com. Subscribe by May 31! |
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 | "I didn’t set out to write a book that messed with form. I wanted to write something that would hook readers’ attention, and show them truthfully what the world inside my head felt like. Here are seven other genre-bending books that do all of this and more."
—Shze-Hui Tjoa, What to Read When You Want to F*ck With Genre |
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| Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB:
Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return
by CAConrad x Wave Books |
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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 June 15, to receive our JULY Poetry Book Club pick Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return by CAConrad and join our subscriber-only conversation with author CAConrad, a Rumpus editor, and a representative from Wave Books.
As a subscriber, we'll send you a copy of this book the first week of June 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 JULY's Poetry Book Club Selection: Following their book AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (winner of the PEN and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry), CAConrad's Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return shifts its attention from the previous book’s focus on communing with animals who are extinct toward communicating and caring for animals still living among us. Recalling the historical and symbolic significance of the boomerang as an instrument of return, these poems emerged from a (soma)tic poetry ritual in which the author wrote with animals who have found ways to thrive in the Anthropocene, resulting in sculptural poems that are uninhibited and mysterious as they emerge organically from the bottom of each page. Guided by the urge “to/desire/the world/as it is/not as/it was,” CAConrad writes from an ecopoetics that is generous and galvanizing, reminding us of how our present attentions collectively shape a future humanity.
About the author:
CAConrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest books are Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return and AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration. The Book of Frank is now available in nine different languages. Other titles include While Standing in Line for Death, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tic for the Future Wilderness, and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. With Robert Dewhurst and Joshua Beckman, they co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. In 2022 Augusto Cascales made a film of their play The Obituary Show. They recently had their first solo exhibition at Fluent Gallery in Santander, Spain, titled "13 Moons: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return." They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.
About the Press:
Wave Books is an independent poetry press based in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to publishing poetry and books by poets.
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| We are now accepting submissions for The Rumpus’s Adoptee-themed month: Letters to Adoption. Letters are being accepted in four categories: letters to birth mothers, letters to birth fathers, letters to my younger self, and letters to adoptive parents. Submissions open now until May 31 at 11:59 pm EST. Submit here.
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.
(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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