New Essays & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "Crusher" by Robbie Herbst
“Your brother had his man-body at thirteen, whereas your body at fifteen is still oil-slick and soft.”
Rumpus Original Column ENOUGH: Three Poems on the Domestic by Miranda Diaz, Renee Cronley, and Carson Wolfe
“I watched his heart / marching in jagged lines / across a black screen, / where so many lovers / had sat before, making deals / with higher powers / for one more day.”
Rumpus Original Poetry: Four Poems by Zachariah Claypole White
“dead in a strange city searching for any late / bloom of jasmine—i’ve always loved winter / but god i miss the birds.”
Rumpus Original Essay: "Feeding the Fear" by Puloma Ghosh
“When the sound of my name called me to a dark ceiling, in a bed that wasn’t my own, I wanted to say, No. Not yet.” |
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| Announcing Our New Virtual Event Series!
Starting JUNE 23 with . . .
Queer Coming of Age: Personal Narratives of Belonging, Identity, and Finding Community |
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 | Join us Sunday, JUNE 23 at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST for a conversation and Q&A with writers Greg Mania (author of Born to be Public), Jacob Tobia (author of Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story), Jen Winston (author of Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants too Much), and Jason Yamas (author of Tweaker World). Co-hosted by Greg Mania and Reema Zaman and presented by The Rumpus.
These four authors will share their experience crafting personal experiences into public narratives. They’ll contribute their insights on writing distinctly queer stories, finding an audience, and (most importantly) finding a creative community. Suggested donation of $20. Pay what you can, no one turned away due to lack of funds. All proceeds after processing fees will help keep The Rumpus going. As an independent volunteer-run lit and culture magazine, the vast majority of the magazine’s funding comes from reader support. This event is co-hosted and organized by Rumpus board member, Reema Zaman. This is the first in a series of author and publishing industry conversations with people we admire and hope to learn from. Themes and topics will vary widely, but all events will connect to our mission of being a platform for risk-taking work and bringing historically underrepresented voices into the literary conversation. |
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Interviews & Reviews
Dustin Pearson interviews Carvell Wallace about Another Word for Love
“Because of the way trauma works...you could make a calendar sectioned by core memories just as well as you could make one sectioned by sunrises.”
Julia Doyle reviews Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep
“...the ideas that undergird this novel form a strong foundation that allow the reader to enter...and decide for themselves: Who really owns what?”
Deborah L. Williams interviews Andromeda Romano-Lax about The Deepest Lake
“Suspense and crime fiction are all about that pressure-cooker atmosphere.”
The First Book: Uche Okonkwo on A Kind of Madness
“Going out of one’s way to write what’s currently trendy, just because it’s trendy, can be counterproductive and take the pleasure out of writing.” |
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| Do you want to establish a regular writing routine? |
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We recently launched a new Rumpus offering: The Writer's Welcome Kit, a 5-week asynchronous online 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.
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.
Ready to start? |
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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: Ananda Lima. Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer born in Brasília, Brazil, now living in Chicago, IL. She's the author of the poetry collection Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Witness, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Poets & Writers. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Craft: Stories I wrote for the Devil is her fiction debut. Subscribe by TODAY June 14! |
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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 TOMORROW at 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 July 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 watch for FREE with your Member code anytime after.
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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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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