A brief UPDATE before we share the new writing and comics published on The Rumpus this week!
On Monday, we reached our $15K summer fundraising goal! Thanks to the 180 supporters who donated, these funds will directly support the 300 contributors we'll publish in the next 12 months. The Rumpus is a lean, mostly volunteer-run organization. But being able to pay writers is one of our most important goals. When The Rumpus started in 2009, there was no regular contributor pay. Seven years later (under a new Publisher), in May 2016, the magazine began to pay feature writers and book reviewers. Each month, we set aside $400. From May 2016-July 2024, eligible contributors were able to opt in for payment at the end of the month, and the money was divided between those writers who opted in. Payments averaged $15-30 per writer each month. By reaching this fundraising goal, we are able to increase our contributor funds and now offer a standard, more transparent rate of $50 per eligible contributor for original writing and comics published between August 2024 and July 2025. With additional donor support, we hope to continue offering this amount—or more—after July 2025. We know $50 is still not enough, and we are working toward being able to pay a better standard rate to all feature contributors and book reviewers, as well as to pay our illustrators and mostly volunteer staff even a modest stipend. If you somehow missed our 10+ emails and dozens of social media posts asking for support, we can still use your help. Please consider making one-time or recurring monthly tax-deductible donation here. |
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New Essays & Columns
Rumpus Original Essay: "Demeter on the Jersey Shore" by Liza Katz Duncan
“We are eating them, drinking them, breathing them in continuously, and we don’t even realize it.”
Rumpus Original Comic: "On People Pleasing" by Sanata Nacro
“Over time, I became a very, very talented chameleon. But I wasn't happy...I was exhausted.” |
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Interviews & Reviews
Svetlana Satchkova interviews Julia Phillips about Bear
“There’s nothing more frightening and vivid than something that’s right in front of you and that you can’t quite believe.”
Kassia Oset reviews Hannah Regel's The Last Sane Woman
“...if you’re hoping for someone to articulate unspeakable things about friendship, creation, and the passage of time, you might do well to ask Hannah Regel.”
Amanda Hawkins interviews Dorinda Wegener about Four Fields
“In every poem I write, I try to have a puzzle. I try to have its face-value meaning and then...there’s always a deeper underneath meaning and there’s always a puzzle.” |
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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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| Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB
our FINAL selection:
Cloud Missives
by Kenzie Allen x Tin House |
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ANNOUNCEMENT: This is the FINAL book in our Indie x Indie Poetry Book Club!
Programs like our Poetry Book Club put you in conversation with the literary community and help keep The Rumpus running. However, the number of subscribers to this club has been low for 5+ years. We are currently losing money running this program. After making a few pivots and added promotional efforts, the interest still remained around 50 subscribers a month. We needed at least 100 steady subscribers to keep going. Sadly, we need to end the program and focus our efforts elsewhere for the sake of sustainability. This is not a program we wanted to end, but we truly can't keep any part of The Rumpus going without financial support.
However, we remain committed to championing emerging and established poets by publishing their poems in the magazine, providing poetry book review coverage, and running interviews with poets. The Poetry Book Club may return in another form in the future. In the meantime, we hope you’ll join us for our September selection and support The Rumpus in other ways by becoming a Member, receiving Letters in the Mail from authors, or making a tax-deductible donation.
Join by midnight August 15, to receive our SEPTEMBER Poetry Book Club pick, Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen. Subscribers will receive a copy of the book and an invite to join a conversation with author Kenzie Allen, a Rumpus editor, and a Tin House editor. Intimate, dissecting, and liberating, Cloud Missives is a poetry collection of excavation and renewal. Like an anthropologist, Kenzie Allen reveals a life from what endures after tragedies and acts of survival. Across four sections, poems explore pop culture—the stereotypes in Peter Pan, Indiana Jones, and beyond—fairy tales, myths, protests, and forgotten histories, before arriving at a dazzling series of love poems that deepen our understanding of romantic, platonic, and communal love. Cloud Missives is an investigation, a manifestation, and a celebration: of the body, of what we make and remake, of the self, and of the heart. With care and deep attention, it asks what one can reimagine of Indigenous personhood in the wake of colonialism, what healing might look like when loving the world around you—and introduces readers to a profound new voice in poetry.
About the author:
Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, Boston Review, Narrative, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Best New Poets, Poets.org, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she now shares time between Toronto, Ontario; Stavanger, Norway; and the Oneida reservation in Green Bay, Wisconsin. About the Press:
Tin House expands the boundaries of what great literature can do. Publisher of award-winning books of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; home to a renowned workshop and seminar series; and partner of a critically acclaimed podcast, Tin House champions writing that is artful, dynamic, and original. We are proud to publish and promote writers who speak to a wide range of experience, and lend context and nuance to their examination of our world. |
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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 . . .
July 1: Ricky Ray is a poet, essayist and eco-mystic who lives with his wife and the ghost of his old brown dog in the old green hills of New England. He is the author of four books of poetry, including The Soul We Share, winner of The Aryamati Prize, and The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself, a finalist for The Laurel Prize. He was educated at Columbia University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and his awards include a Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, a Liam Rector Fellowship and a Zoeglossia Fellowship. He lectures on poetry, animism and integral ecology, and he serves on the advisory board of the Program for the Evolution of Spirituality at Harvard. Subscribe by July 31! |
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 | Interested in volunteering with The Rumpus? Applications are now open for a Volunteer Poetry Editor!
If you're interested in joining our team, learn more about the position and apply below! We're accepting applications from July 18-22. |
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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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