| Along with our regular update of what's new on The Rumpus this week (original interviews, reviews, fiction, poetry, and more!) we're also announcing an open call to join The Rumpus's inaugural CAPACITY-BUILDING BOARD. Are you an advocate for indie literary organizations? Do you enjoy sharing your skills and expertise? Are you someone who sees a way to help and takes action? If the answer is “YES” to all of the above, we’re looking for Board Members like you!
The Rumpus remains an outlier as a widely-read lit magazine that is not connected to any academic institution or wealthy benefactor, or does not exist as part of a larger publishing company. This indie spirit allows us to be a platform for work that moves our editors—not what necessarily responds to markets or trends. This also means that we rely primarily on volunteer labor and reader-support to keep The Rumpus afloat. The Rumpus needs a capacity-building board to ensure this work can continue and become sustainable for many years to come! |
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We're inviting 3-6 volunteer board members through a public call. This will complete our initial cohort, totaling 9-12 board members, who will collaborate to help us achieve fiscal sustainability.
We’re accepting applications NOW THROUGH MARCH 31. |
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| Can’t commit to joining the Board, but you’d still like to help us reach our fundraising goal? |
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Interviews & Reviews
Olivia Cheng interviews Andrew Boryga about Victim
“I think there are genuinely people who want to uplift voices of color, and there still are, but I got the sense that they wanted you if you told them the story they wanted to hear.”
Rob Franklin reviews Vinson Cunningham's Great Expectations
“Of the many thematic throughlines that surface from Cunningham’s masterful prose, perhaps the most salient is the duality of politics and religion, the notion of ‘predestination’...”
Steve Cariddi interviews Debbie Urbanski about After World
“Perhaps my depression has made me more interested in emotional extremes and how those extremes change our view of reality and perhaps even change our actual reality.”
The Rumpus interviews Armen Davoudian about The Palace of Forty Pillars for The First Book
“It was this feeling of embodied dislocation that I wanted to capture in poetry.” |
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New Fiction & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "Birthday at Newkirk Plaza" by Eric Sacks
“The kid with the skateboard didn’t look like he had a lot of heart. The other group were a bunch of little shits. These are middle school kids, mind you. The worst of the worst.”
Rumpus Original Column ENOUGH: "Fire" by Doina Tonner
“Back at the hotel, he staggers down the corridor and I, two steps behind, pray he won’t be able to open the door.”
Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Melissa Crowe
“if we’ve gotten good at seeing in the dark, / consolation of adaptation? We’re not like / lantern fish or frogs—ordinary bodies / ours, ordinary needs—but sometimes / we make out the shape of what’s coming” |
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Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB:
Blue on a Blue Palette by Lynne Thompson
x BOA Editions |
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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 TONIGHT March 15, to receive our April Poetry Book Club pick Blue on a Blue Palette by Lynne Thompson and join our subsciber-only conversation with author Lynne Thompson and a Rumpus 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 April's Poetry Book Club selection: Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys—which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos—replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: “Say history. Claim. Say wild.”
“Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette is at turns—and, often, all at once—old and new. That is, rooted strong in a long tradition and legitimately experimental. Thompson’s range in form and subject matter is equaled only by the deftness with which she handles each. In these pages we get a true blue blueswoman who knows when to whisper and when to wail, one who has lived some, and means to make song of what she’s seen.” —John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
About April's featured indie press: Since its founding in 1976, BOA has published more than 300 books of American poetry, poetry-in-translation, and short fiction. BOA Editions, Ltd., a not-for-profit publisher of poetry and other literary works, fosters readership and appreciation of contemporary literature. By identifying, cultivating, and publishing both new and established poets and selecting authors of unique literary talent, BOA brings high quality literature to the public. Support for this effort comes from the sale of its publications, grant funding, and private donations.
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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 . . .
April 1: Jane Wong is the author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir, and the poetry collections How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour. An associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University, she grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in Seattle, Washington Subscribe by Mar. 31!
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| Interested in volunteering with The Rumpus? Applications are now open for a Volunteer Fiction Editor! If you're interested in joining our team, learn more about the position and apply below! We're accepting applications through March 18. |
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| Two new columns, Collaborative Criticism and Close Reads are now open year-round!
Our We Are More column is open for submissions today/March 15 until April 15. We Are More is an inclusive series for Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) and SWANA diaspora writers, curated and edited by Michelle Zamanian, co-edited by Leila Mansouri, and read and assistant edited by Marianne Manzler.
Fiction is open for submissions through today/March 15.
Comics is open for submissions until March 31.
Our new column Parallel Practice is open again for submissions. Read the call here before submitting.
We are open for Funny Women and Prose and Poetry 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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