New Poetry & Columns
Rumpus Original Fiction: "Loss" by Josh Denslow
“Then the eyes appeared. Exactly where they had been yesterday. Piercing and yellow, and I guess I just had to say it: malevolent.”
Rumpus Original Column ENOUGH: "The Grooming of a Nymphet" by Lorraine Hanlon Comanor
“Until then, I hadn’t realized I was teetering on a tightrope I might not be able to negotiate.”
Rumpus Original Column Voices on Addiction: "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace" by Elizabeth Jannuzzi
“My brother’s ghost lived somewhere in these hilly woods; I was sure of it. I kept thinking maybe I’d find him over the next crest.”
Rumpus Original Column Funny Women: "Creative Writing Tips for Men" by Laura Berlinsky-Schine
“If there is a scene where a woman acts 'irritable' and then menstruates, delete it. ”
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GIFT RUMPUS merch & subscriptions this holiday season!
TODAY (Dec. 15) is the last day to order to ensure delivery by Dec. 25. |
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Interviews & Reviews
Aldo Amparán interviews Leslie Sainz about Have You Been Long Enough at Table
“...writers, artists, work in resistance to their own mortality—they defy it through their artmaking.”
Samantha Kathryn O'Brien reviews Sara Gallardo's January
“The changing of the seasons promises to unveil the inevitable, a secret that by its very nature, cannot be kept: she is pregnant.”
Andrew Boryga interviews Frank Santo about The Birthparents
“I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing this in a way where it’s like, ‘Look at these poor people and how sad their lives are.’ That’s not what life is. There are moments of joy.” |
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What To Read When: The Most Beautiful Books of 2023
"Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight, but while compiling the images for this list I noticed my eye being drawn toward minimalist designs and either highly-saturated or nearly-neutral colors. Even if I were to do nothing else in life but read (imagine!), I would still come to the end with a towering TBR pile. All to say: We’ve read and loved some of the books on this list, but sometimes gazing lovingly at a cover is enough to scratch that itch." |
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Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB:
How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook
x Milkweed 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 Dec. 15th, to receive our January Poetry Book Club pick How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez and join our subsciber-only conversation with translators Wendy Call and Shook.
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: How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems examines the intersection of Zoque struggles against colonialism and empire, and those of North African immigrants and refugees. Sánchez encountered the latter in Barcelona as a revelation, “spreading their white blankets on the ground / as if they’ll soon return to sea / flying the sail of the promised land / the land that became a mirage.” Other works bring us just as close to similarly imperiled relatives, ancestors, gods, and archetypal Zoque men and women that Sánchez addresses with both deeply prophetic and childlike love. Coming from the only woman to ever publish a book of poetry in Zoque and Spanish, this timely, powerful collection pairs the bilingual originals with an English translation for the first time. This book is for anyone interested in poetry as knowledge, proclaimed with both feet squarely set on ancient ground. About December's featured indie press: Just as the common milkweed plant is the site of metamorphosis for monarch butterflies, Milkweed Editions seeks to be a site of metamorphosis in the literary ecosystem. They take risks on debut and experimental writers, invest significant time and care in the editorial process, and enable dynamic engagement between authors and readers. They operate as a nonprofit to pursue these ends without overbearing financial pressure. And yet, though profits aren’t their primary focus, helping their authors succeed certainly is. Just so, since their founding in 1980, they’ve published over 350 books of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and now have over four million copies in circulation. They believe that literature has the potential to change the way we see the world, and that bringing new voices to essential conversations is the clearest path to ensuring a vibrant, diverse, and empowered future. |
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| Interested in advertising in The Rumpus e-newsletter or on therumpus.net? Contact Monica at ads@therumpus.net. |
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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 . . .
December 15: Taylor Byas is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter. Her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is out now from Soft Skull Press.
**BOOK GIVEAWAY alert! Subscribe to Letters in the Mail by Friday, Dec. 22 @ Noon EST for a chance to win a copy of Taylor Byas's collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. US participants only. Giveaway ends on 12/22 at 12 pm Eastern. Three winners will be randomly selected on 12/22. Must be willing to provide a US mailing address for shipping.**
January 1: Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones is a writer from Puerto Rico whose poems and short fiction have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, wildness, Ambit Magazine, Radar Poetry, and other publications. Her chapbook, Bedroom Pop, was published by dancing girl press in 2021. Her full-length debut, The Hurricane Book, was published by Rose Metal Press in October 2023. Claudia lives in Brooklyn, New York. |
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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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