Interviews & Reviews
Sun Yung Shin's The Wet Hex, reviewed by Genevieve Hartman
"It’s the kind of darkness that leaves the reader trapped in embryonic stasis, unsure where to go..."
Janet Rodriguez interviews Myronn Hardy about his newest poetry collection Aurora Americana
"The poem is in motion. I wake up before the sun emerges and write as its light covers the page."
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Boys Alive and Theorem, reviewed by Souli Boutis
“For the underclass, sidelined by progress and prosperity, life is lived in the unbridled play of vulgar speech.”
María Alejandra Barrios interviews Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya about his novel The Holy Days of Gregario Pasos
“I think I was also exploring how witnessing, absorbing, and listening are related to writing, and questioning whether this is a valuable way of approaching a life. I think it can be.”
Kateri Kramer reviews Thomas D. Seeley's Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-runners for Sketch Book Reviews
"Although written by bee expert and accomplished scientist, Thomas Seeley, the book has been woven together with personal narrative. This makes it not only informative, but also, often heartwarming."
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Originals & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "Storytellers" by Abhigna Mooraka
“If you ask me later, I will say my daughter was too young to carry an heirloom—she could not fully understand what it means to inherit this story—but that is a woman of tomorrow, one with the gift of hindsight.”
Rumpus Original Essay: "Escape Velocity" by L.E. Marshall
“That is the comfort of being in the liminal space with self-involved, emotionally unavailable people: You can, if you want to, disappear.”
Rumpus Comics Presents: "Student Hunger is an Issue on College Campuses" written and illustrated by Rachel Litchman
"When I was a freshman in college, I was hungry. Hunger that was a hollow envy inside my stomach. A deep, aching want." |
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What to Read When: Your Spirit Needs a Refresh
And so, I have crafted a lean list of ten books that challenge the academic notion of “understanding” what you just read. Books that are intuitively it (for me) and are so nuanced, real, and odd that one must take their time in chewing their rambunctious and deeply honest thought patterns. A palate cleanser for the self. An electric shock to the mind. If books create new sense, then perhaps they can help us think, and by extension act, our way to a gentler, all-encompassing world.
—India Lena González |
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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 between Sept. 16 & midnight October 15th, to receive our November Poetry Book Club pick Orders of Service by Willie Lee Kinard III and join our subsciber-only conversation with author Willie Lee Kinard III, Carey Salerno, Executive Editor and Executive Director at Alice James Books, and Brian Spears, Rumpus Poetry 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 November's Poetry Book Club selection: As a young, Black, queer person in a small town in the South where everyone knows everyone, Orders of Service is a coming-of-age exploration of the everyday fever of fleeting relationships, while capturing the romantic, psychic quotidian of the Bible Belt.
“Willie Lee Kinard III’s astonishing debut collection braids mythology, sex and desire, gutbucket and gospel—defying outdated notions of bodies, binaries, the black church, and the natural world. These verses render testimonies so electric, you can’t help but shout. Kinard knows caring begins in language. He knows black boys crafted of fable can become sharp-witted and tender lovers and loving men. Orders of Service cuts so clean and deep you’ll find yourself several pages in before you notice blood on your fingers.”
—Yona Harvey
About November's featured indie press: Founded as a feminist press in 1973, Alice James Books is committed to collaborating with literary artists of excellence whose voices have been historically marginalized by producing, promoting, and distributing their work which often engages the public on important social issues. Alice James provides a platform from which to elevate exceptional literary artists and is dedicated to helping its writers achieve purposeful engagement with broad audiences and communities nationwide. We help writers tell their stories and connect with readers. We envision this work making continued contributions that sustain American literary and artistic culture and to growing a more understanding, equitable, and just community through literature. |
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IN PERSON | September 28, 7 PM McNally Jackson Seaport, NYC
The Rumpus presents Sapphic Storytelling: Queer eQuinox
Featuring authors Hannah Beresford, Jaquira Díaz, CJ Hauser, Lars Horn, T Kira Madden, and Kelley Van Dilla. Moderated by Rumpus Senior Features Editor, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn. This is the latest in our reading and conversation series were we present writers we adore and use the term “sapphic” as a tongue-in-cheek term to refer to queerness that nods to the writerly and lacunae-filled history of queer people of all sexualities and genders. This event is a Bookends event presented in partnership with the Brooklyn Book Festival. |
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| | HYBRID |October 9, 6 PM
Malaprops Bookstore, Asheville, NC
The Rumpus co-presents Good Women: Halle Hill in Conversation with Diamond Forde Join The Rumpus IRL(or virtually) for a conversation with Halle Hill and Diamond Forde about Hill's debut story collection, Good Women from Hub City Press.
In her debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living. Darkly funny and deeply human, Good Women observes how place, blood-ties, generational trauma, obsession, and boundaries—or lack thereof—influence how we navigate our small worlds, and how those worlds so often collide in ways we don’t expect. Through intimate moments of personal choice, Hill carefully shines a light on how these twelve women shape and form themselves through faith and abandon, transgression and conformity, community, caution, and solitude. |
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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 . . .
October 1: Ling Ma is a writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She wrote the novel Severance and the story collection Bliss Montage. Her fiction has been awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the Whiting Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and others. She lives in Chicago with her family. (subscribe by September 30)
October 15: Kelly Sather is the author of the short story collection SMALL IN REAL LIFE, selected by Deesha Philyaw for the 2023 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The book invokes the myth and melancholy of L.A. glamour, of starry-eyed women and men striving for their own Hollywood shimmer no matter the consequences. Her stories and interviews have appeared in publications including Santa Monica Review, Pembroke Magazine, J Journal, PANK, and on ZYZZYVA. (subscribe by October 14) |
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| Featured Partner or Sponsor |
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| Interested in advertising in The Rumpus e-newsletter or on therumpus.net? Contact Monica at [email protected]. |
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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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