Dear Readers,
As the summer winds down, we have a few announcements to share. First off, our wonderful Social Media & Engagement Editor, Jade Chin, recently moved on to start her MFA at Emerson College. We're grateful for her thoughtful work amplifying the writers we publish. We wish you luck, Jade! Emerson is lucky to have you.
Last week, we welcomed Caitlin Rae Taylor who took over Jade's role as our Engagement Editor. Caitlin is a writer, editor, and designer based in Asheville, NC. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of NC, Wilmington where she served as the fiction editor for Ecotone and the publishing assistant for Lookout Books. She has worked with nonprofit press Milkweed Editions and as editor of Southern Humanities Review. She is currently the art director/designer for Press Pause Press. We're excited to have her on the team!
Very very soon, we'll also announce our next Editor-in-Chief! We received over 160 applications for this position and interviewed 8 candidates. It was a tough choice to make, but we think we've found an excellent addition to The Rumpus. We're excited to share the news shortly.
Below you'll also find information about our new Show Us Your Desk host! A series run by our wonderful Interviews Editors. Welcome to the team, Greg Mania!
There's a lot to look forward to this fall. The support we received through Members and Donors have kept us going this year and allowed us to provide small stipends for our EiC, Managing Editor, and Engagement Editor for the first time and add a little more money to the monthly contributor pool. We have a long way to go until we're fully sustainable, but we're thankful to those of you who have helped us get here.
-Alyson Sinclair, Publisher |
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Interviews & Reviews
Shanta Lee Gander interviewed by Naya Clark about her poetry collection Black Metamorphoses.
"There are ways that storytelling and mythmaking dare to look something in the face, as harsh as history. It can be an act of resistance."
Sandra Newman interviews John Cotter about his memoir Losing Music.
"There’s the story of the sickness and there’s the story of the soul. It’s necessary to get between those stories."
Rob Franklin reviews Colson Whitehead's novel Crook Manifesto.
"Bleak as it may sound, Carney’s world is rendered in almost luxuriant, comedic detail, one of Whitehead’s greatest talents. There is evidence of exuberant play on every page." |
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Originals & Columns
From the Archives: "On Documentation" by Joselyn Takacs:
"He was so eager to please, to be agreeable, invisible, to take apart the island like a watch and see its composite parts."
Voices on Addiction: "Where the Heart Is" by Mary Ann McGuigan. Curated by Kelly Thompson:
"A panicky tingling down the back of my legs made me desperate to get out of the car, to run, find my way home."
Rumpus Original Poetry: "Oracle for the End of the World" and "Furrows in a Fallow Field" by Stephanie Niu:
"took two to tool / took tool to + / took + took tools / took two to take / two stake + tools / to stake to deed" |
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When I was finally able to read again, I went in search of books that captured this juxtaposition of pain and beauty; terror and awe. I did not want the portal to close, even though I was ready to emerge from the tunnel of grief. In the distance, a slip of joy flickered in and out of focus. I lunged. This collection of books then is the rope I clung to as I emerged. It includes old beloveds and hot, new lovers. These are books vested in the visceral experience of wonder amidst the ordinary experience of grief. They demand a certain kind of embodied attention, which is also in some cases their subject matter. In all of them pulses the wunde in wunder (German), an embrace of contradictory truths. Salvation on a slice of burnt toast. Read them to remember the world when the world seems so desperately far away.
—Rumpus Editors |
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Introducing: Show Us Your Desk, hosted by Greg Mania
Join The Rumpus on the second Tuesday of each month at 3pm PT / 6pm ET on Instagram Live for SHOW US YOUR DESK, hosted by Greg Mania! Mania will take us into the writing spaces of our favorite authors and ask them about their writing life, writing process, and any exciting new or forthcoming projects.
Greg Mania is a writer, comedian, and award-winning screenwriter based in New York City. His words have been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms. His debut memoir, BORN TO BE PUBLIC, is out now from CLASH Books.
Mania will be coming to you LIVE for his very first SHOW US YOUR DESK on the second Tuesday of September (Sept. 12). Stay tuned for more info and don't forget to follow The Rumpus on Instagram so you don't miss a thing. |
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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 September 15th, to receive our October Poetry Book Club pick Another Last Call edited by Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis and join our subsciber-only conversation with editors Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis in conversation with Kristen Renee Miller, Editor in Chief and Executive Director at Sarabande Books, and Marisa Siegel, Senior Acquiring Editor for Trade at Northwestern University Press and Editor-at-Large for The Rumpus.
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 October's Poetry Book Club selection: In 1997, Sarabande published Last Call, a poetry anthology that became a formative text on the lived experiences of addiction. Now, more than twenty-five years later, editors Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis offer this companion volume for a new generation. Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance showcases work from poets like Joy Harjo, Afaa M. Weaver, Diane Seuss, Layli Long Soldier, Sharon Olds, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, and Ocean Vuong, as well as many new and powerful voices.
“Why do I feel so at home among the poems and poets of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance? There is nothing more human, haunted, humbling, and bottom line, than the desire that fuels addiction and recovery—and poetry. In reading this brilliant anthology, I feel less alone. I’ve found my people.” —Diane Seuss, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for frank: sonnets
About October's featured indie press:Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary press founded in Louisville, Kentucky. Established in 1994 to champion poetry, fiction, and essay, they are committed to creating lasting editions that honor exceptional writing. With nearly three hundred titles in print, they have earned a dedicated readership and a national reputation as a publisher of diverse forms and innovative voices. Through their free arts programming like Sarabande Writing Labs, they are proud to invest in emerging writers and serve as an educational resource locally and nationally. |
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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 . . .
September 1: Mario Chard is the author of Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018), winner of the Dorset Prize and the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry. (subscribe by August 31)
September 15: Quinn Carver Johnson is the author of The Perfect Bastard (Northwestern University Press), was the editor-in-chief of the Aonian literary magazine, and is host of the People's Poetry reading series in Tulsa, OK. (subscribe by September 15) |
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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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