This week on The Rumpus and we're so close! |
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Last week, we launched a $10K fundraiser to finally, after over a decade, redesign our glitchy online magazine. As I type this we've reached $9,149, that's 91% of our goal! We need to raise the remaining $851 by next Thursday, June 14, but . . . maybe we could get there quicker??
We're grateful to the 199 donors who have gotten us this far. However, it's simultaneously wild to realize that this is less than 1% of the people who have signed up to receive this free newsletter. This is another example of why it's so difficult for independent literary magazines (and arts organizations in general) to survive---much less thrive.
Instead of mourning the loss of another literary magazine, please support the things you'd like to exist in the world now. Help our scrappy, non-millionaire team build a better Rumpus today!
ps. This may be dreaming big, but if we DO end up reaching $10K before June 14, we can definitely make good use of any "extra" funds. One immediate way is to cover the ~$500 GoFundMe fees charged on $10K in donations. So really $10,500 raised = $10K to The Rumpus.
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Interviews & Reviews
Luis Alberto Urrea, donut dollies and matriarchs (an interview).
"When I was growing up, I didn’t know anything about my younger mom. I was born in Tijuana, raised in San Diego, and everybody in my family, including my extended family, was Mexican—Spanish-speaking Mexicans—and my mom was the only (Anglo) American. It didn’t occur to me that she never connected with her family back East."
Melissa Rodman reviews Erica Berry’s Wolfish.
"Berry focuses on these longstanding myths because she believes that 'we cannot untether the biological wolf from the stories told about it without also examining those associative, metaphorical stories.' Her references accumulate, steeping the reader in a winding canon of wolf lore."
Jared Pappas-Kelley, the blur of fiction and reality (an interview).
"We swim in feedback, baby sharks, and it’s about how do we live in that and make sense or are perhaps shaped by it. Could this be translated as an experience, the sort of bits that fall between the cracks when nothing specifically is happening or directly contradicts?" |
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Originals & Columns
"Broodmare" by Christine Kwon:
"How lovely to have a grandma / from whom to steal an extremely large / rug. A step-grandma at that. / Twombly, the cat who needs me / the least, tightropes the sofa ledge / behind me to attack our new investment / lamp and I forget how profoundly / tired I am, then listing the objects / in the room, I forgot a little too." |
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Rumpus Editor & Publisher Q&A with
Lit Mag News
"We're Holding a Space in the Community." A Chat with Alyson Sinclair and Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of The Rumpus with Lit Mag News. Watch the interview here and thank you Becky Tuch for having us on! |
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Every month subscribers receive a book in the mail handpicked by The Rumpus staff.Now through midnight on June 15, you can sign up for our June Poetry Book Club pick The Diaspora Sonnets by Oliver de la Paz.
As a subscriber, you'll also be invited to an exclusive online video discussion with the book's author + a Rumpus Editor. 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.
**Due to consistently low numbers, we've ended our prose Book Club program. Our last pick was for June 2023. Those subscribers were contacted in advance, will receive their last book, and are invited to join the June author conversation as usual. All their recurring payments were discontinued. If you want to see these sorts of programs continue, they are a LOT of work, so we need readers to join and tell their friends!*
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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 . . .
June 15: Paul Hlava Ceballos
July 1: Abigail Thomas and Beth Kephart
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Calls for Submissions
Kitchen Table Literary Arts x The Rumpus
Voices on Addiction:
Open May 1st - June 30th.
Parallel Practice, a new monthly column at The Rumpus, is edited by our very own Anna Held.
We are open for Funny Women and 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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