In case you missed our BIG news this week, we relaunched the website on Monday! It took a ton of volunteer hours to pull this off, but we've gotten a lot of positive feedback so far. We hope you'll take a few moments to check it out.
Next Thursday, we're starting our annual Member Drive. We're trying to keep this to 2 weeks (vs. 6 weeks!) this year. Our goal is 600 active Members by Dec. 1. If you haven't joined us yet, please consider being part of the community (and getting some perks for yourself!) now. We'd love to wrap this up early and know we can safely plan for 2024! |
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New Poetry & Columns
Rumpus Original Essay: "You're Not My Birth Mother, But Thanks" by Michael Montlack
"Her hands gripped the armrests as if preparing for a crash landing. I suddenly felt grateful I hadn’t unloaded the gay thing on her."
Rumpus Original Column: ENOUGH: "Abstinence of Education" by Sarah Roberts Brown
"Even through the din of that giant room and the rasp of my fraying-at-the-seams early teen brain, I sense their shared suffering as something euphonic."
From the Archives: Rumpus Original Poetry: "Four Poems" by Noor Hindi
"I tried & tried to love. I was / little & terrified / of God, my lust hanging / from the roots of my hair —"
Rumpus Original Essay: "The Blood of My Mother" by Charmaine Arjoonlal
"I feel snarled like dislodged seaweed left to drift aimlessly in the current. My toes stretch for the sandy bottom."
Rumpus Original Comic: "Back Home" by Yan Ruan
"on the hushed yellow of my girlhood / sheet we're supposed to be asleep / is this weird, you whisper after / the rain stops, and I say No to reassure / myself."
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Interviews & Reviews
Margaret Juhae Lee interviews Jami Nakamura Lin about her speculative memoir The Night Parade
"Reality isn't your strong suit, lean into the weird."
Michael Barron reviews Don DeLillo's Library of America volumes
"To paraphrase the last line of THE NAMES: DeLillo’s offering is language."
Edie Meidav interviews Shastri Akella about his novel The Sea Elephants
"...a sentence can reveal the body, its beauty and resilience even in the face of violence."
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What to Read if You Want to Understand Adoptees
"These stories taught me so much about the immense variety in adoption experience as well as the core things we held in common: a feeling of bewildered displacement, even in the most loving of homes. A deep well of questions and secrets that were out of our reach. This list contains many adoptee authors, but there are others whose experiences have resonated with me and made me feel less alone. They have formed the beloved community that has sustained me my whole life and kept me company. Each year, more adoptees tell and publish their stories, and their words feed me."
—Susan Kiyo Ito |
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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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| This week's featured Sponsor |
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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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ASHEVILLE, NC: NOVEMBER 17
AVL Review: Lit Night
Story Parlor | 227 Haywood Rd.
Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
Come see us next Friday at Story Parlor where we're presenting Rumpus contributor Tessa Fontaine. We're sharing the evening with 4 other local lit orgs: Flatiron Writers Room, Great Smokies Writing Program, Lit Local, & Poetrio (Malaprops Bookstore).
Tickets $20 in advance. *Only 8 tix left! Event is likely to sell out, we encourage you to buy in advance! |
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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: Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was long-listed for a National Book Award in 2018. Her reportage is the 2022 winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Her animations have been nominated for three Emmys and won an Edward R. Murrow Award. Currently, she is a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library researching the history of the Jewish Labor Bund. (subscribe by November 30) |
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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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