Interviews & Reviews
Darcy Jay Gagnon interviews Kyoko Mori about Cat and Bird
"When entering a narrative that has great emotion, it’s important to commit to capturing the emotion...But also knowing when to stop. Knowing when to leave that scene..."
Georgie Devereux reviews Patrick Langley's The Variations
"Langley’s is a masterful novel, grand and overarching, with sentences beautifully pared."
Antonio DeJesus Lopez interviews Richard Blanco about Homeland of My Body
"It’s the poet or artist’s job to open up a new dialogue, to ask questions...to turn a subject or an issue on its head and see what we’re not looking at."
Robert Monastery reviews Mosab Abu Toha's Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
"Toha’s poetry resists erasure through its interruptions and echoes of life in Gaza, through its observations of both external and internal spaces..." |
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New Fiction & Columns
Rumpus Original Comic: "Queer as Family" by Brian Gresko
"John is my dad. Biology or not. He raised me, loved me, and cared for me as his son. His queer son."
Rumpus Original Essay: "Syncopation" by Mollie Hawkins
"This saxophone, this airport jazz, is a séance bringing my father back to me—again and again and again."
Rumpus Original Column Funny Women: "Now Open for Submissions" by Maya Afilalo
"Please double-space, insert page numbers on the bottom left hand corner ONLY, and use size 12.5 font. Serif fonts preferred, except the following: Times, Garamond, Georgia, Palatino, and Baskerville. Sans serif STRONGLY NOT preferred unless the piece is about Geminis." |
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"In the last few years, though, audiobooks have helped me rekindle my identity as a reader. I can flip between titles based on my headspace, change a book’s playback speed, and queue for upcoming releases that will automatically download once it’s my turn in line. I’m a big fan of the Libby app and a notorious holder of more than ten library cards, which helps when the wait for a title at my local library is months on end. Listening has made me a better writer, too, and has reinforced the value in reading my drafts aloud to untangle adjectives and commas, to find cadence so lines are rounded, metered, whole.
Here are some of the audiobooks I’ve enjoyed recently, from authors and performers whose voices I can’t get out of my head. May they meet you with warmth, wherever you are."
—Stephanie Trott, Managing Editor, The Rumpus, What to Read When You Want to Listen |
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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 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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Join The Rumpus on Instagram Live for Show Us Your Desk with Greg Mania! Greg Mania's next desk belongs to Katya Apekina, author of MOTHER DOLL out this month from Overlook Press!
Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, Literary Hub, and others, and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She has published stories in various literary magazines and translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize and a 3rd Year Fiction Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she did her MFA.
Tune in on 3/12 at 3pm PT/6pm ET on Instagram Live for Show Us Your Desk, where Greg gives us a glimpse into the physical and internal landscapes where authors create our favorite books.
Missed the last interview in the series? Check out Greg's conversation with author Andrés N. Ordorica here.
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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 . . .
March 15: Aimee Bender is the author of six books of fiction including NY Times Notable Book The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and most recently The Butterfly Lampshade. Her short fiction has been published widely, and she’s so glad The Rumpus unearthed this letter. Subscribe by Mar. 14! |
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| Fiction is open for submissions until 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.
Heads up: We'll be opening up submissions fo
(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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