Interviews & Reviews
Elizabeth Acevedo interviewed by Greg Mania about her novel Family Lore.
"The nature of coming from families that may not be forthcoming with family history is that silence plays as big of a role in the stories as the narratives do. And so I allow space for what isn’t said."
Seth L. Riley reviews Joyce Carol Oates' Zero-Sum.
"Oates imparts glimpses of hope by showing us the ratio between right and responsibility is hardly all or nothing."
Christine Sneed interviewed by Jeremy T. Wilson about her new short story collection, Direct Sunlight.
"I do have to keep feeling surprised as I write, however, and each surprise must feel earned. No kangaroos pretending to be humans!"
Joanna Acevedo reviews Estanislao Lopez’s debut collection We Borrowed Gentleness.
"A stunning effort, which begins with the self and swells to address family and God, We Borrowed Gentleness abounds with cutthroat lines, gorgeous revelations, and a straightforward style." |
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Originals & Columns
Two Poems: "Self-Portrait Using a Negative Pregnancy Test as a Microphone" by Emily Joy Oomen:
"I sing at the top of my lungs the national anthem of vaginal joy / My voice a burst of neon / What’s more punk than belting into a microphone you peed on?"
"The Gifts" written and illustrated Emil Wilson:
"A few days later, the cat killed a bird and left it on the stairs. It had always been Roy's job to pick up any dead animals."
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What To Read When: Celebrating Trans, Nonbinary, and Genderqueer Writers
You’ve probably heard me say this before, but I am often disheartened by the quick turnover of reviews and general book coverage. I am always happy when we get reviews coming in of books that are three or five years old—not those “rediscovered classics” or “lost gems,” but like a gawky tween. One of the greatest virtues a writer can have is stubbornness persistence, and I have it in droves. Maybe this next nudge will be the one that finally convinces someone to read the book they keep putting off?
With that, please enjoy this roundup of not-forthcoming delights.
— Rumpus Editors |
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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 August 15th, to receive our September Poetry Book Club pick The Kingdom of Surfaces by Sally Wen Mao and join our subsciber-only conversation with the author, her editor, Jeff Shotts at Graywolf Press, and Rumpus Poetry Editor, Brian Spears.
As a subscriber, we'll send you a copy of this book the first week of September 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 September's Poetry Book Club selection: In The Kingdom of Surfaces, award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao examines art and history—especially the provenance of objects such as porcelain, silk, and pearls—to frame an important conversation on beauty, empire, commodification, and violence. In lyric poems and wide-ranging sequences, Mao interrogates gendered expressions such as the contemporary “leftover women,” which denotes unmarried women, and the historical “castle-toppler,” a term used to describe a concubine whose beauty ruins an emperor and his empire. These poems also explore the permeability of object and subject through the history of Chinese women in America, labor practices around the silk loom, and the ongoing violence against Asian people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At its heart, The Kingdom of Surfaces imagines the poet wandering into a Western fantasy, which covets, imitates, and appropriates Chinese aesthetics via Chinamania and the nineteenth-century Aesthetic movement, while perpetuating state violence upon actual lives. The title poem is a speculative recasting of “Through the Looking-Glass,” set in a surreal topsy-turvy version of the China-themed 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. The Kingdom of Surfaces is a brilliantly conceived call for those who recognize the horrors of American exceptionalism to topple the empire that values capital over lives and power over liberation.
About September's featured indie press:Graywolf Press is a leading nonprofit publisher committed to the discovery and energetic publication of twenty-first century American and international literature. In recent years, Graywolf books have won numerous national and international awards—including the Booker and Booker International Prizes, the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Founded in 1974, the press is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. |
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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 . . .
August 15: Sequoia Nagamatsu author of How High We Go in the Dark, a national bestseller and New York Times Editors' Choice, as well as the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (subscribe by August 14)
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) |
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| ENOUGH a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for work by women and non-binary people who engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence is now open for submissions until August 7th.
Save the dates! Reading periods opening soon for:
Original Comics (starting Aug. 1) and original Fiction (Aug. 15)
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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