The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Hello
I was about seven or eight when I first noticed. The phone would ring—and don’t picture an iPhone or some sleek cordless number; it was a urine-yellow rotary with a long, coiled cord, mounted over our...
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A Love Letter to Fuckhead
Denis Johnson’s book Jesus’ Son set my brain on fire. I discovered it at a book store, and there was no place to sit; I wandered around the store in dizzying laps, mouth agape, astonished at what I was...
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Voices on Addiction: Shame Is a Treble Hook
In the Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “And everything conspires to keep quiet about us,/ half out of shame perhaps, half out of/ some secret hope.” Shame is a treble hook that tells me that...
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #90: Erika Carter
Erika Carter’s debut novel Lucky You tells the story of three young women in their early twenties who leave their waitressing jobs in an Arkansas college town to embark on a year off grid in the Ozark...
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Language Is All Convention: Talking with Elif Batuman
The Idiot is Elif Batuman’s second book, but the novel could also be considered the New Yorker writer’s true debut. Though Batuman became well-known with her 2010 essay collection The Possessed:...
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What to Read When You Want to Go to College
It’s been quite a week in American policymaking and politicking. Among the horrible things the current administration is doing is an attempt to protect white students from discrimination. Or, in...
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Ready for Change: Discussing Sexual Assault with SafeBAE
SafeBAE was founded by three teenage survivors of sexual assault and cyberbullying, Daisy Coleman, Jada Smith, and Ella Fairon, along with Daisy’s older brother, Charlie Coleman, with the assistance of...
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CA$H 4 GOLD
We’re not your typical cash for gold place. This is what my boss tells me as he shows me around the new store, brightly lit and smelling of fresh carpet. The Gold Estate, he says, gesturing to the four...
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How to Workshop N-Words
At 8:30 a.m., our fiction workshop professor always has a stack of papers scattered restlessly around his 1993, all-black Air Max. In these classrooms, the instructor is always seated at the front of...
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All My Visits from Santa
Confession: I’m a Hindu who loves Christmas. Given the extra bounce in my step that December brings out in me every year, I shouldn’t have been surprised when it was in the form of my favorite...
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Becoming Bodies
During my junior year of high school, I had Spanish class in a room where single-person desks were arranged in an L along two walls, so that our teacher could see all of our faces. I sat near the...
View ArticleENOUGH: The Art of the Cover Up
ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and...
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Fitting In
“Of course I’ll have the wings,” I say. I hate wings. They don’t have any meat on them. Just slimy sticks of skin that made my hands smell like shit for days. I went for more wings, a few french...
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Rumpus Exclusive: Passing as Privileged
I was at a networking event a couple of months ago, talking to a few other young New York City journalists. As it often does, the conversation drifted into politics—how divided our country is, the...
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Renovating Reality: A Remembrance of J. D. McClatchy
I was sad to learn last week of the death of poet J. D. McClatchy. He was the first creative writing instructor I ever had, when I took Creative Writing 201, Introductory Poetry, during the fall of my...
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Inborn Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact
You wear the red vest Mom got you for my reception with pleasure, the bolo tie that matches Dad’s tucked under your chin. You put your arm around my shoulders, and I laugh. Behind us, the lake...
View ArticleENOUGH: Rescue Me
ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women and non-binary people that engage with rape culture, sexual assault, and...
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When We Were Friends
We are the type of busy that affords long afternoons taking personality quizzes. Veronica scoots her laptop across the table towards me. The screen reads, What is your true color aura? It’s the year of...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Basement
The first thing I noticed was the guy’s mirthless laugh; I’m talking one hundred percent mirth-free, the most totally and completely prickish laugh I’ve ever heard in real life. A sound designed to...
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #153: Julie Schumacher
Several years back, a writer friend asked a literary agent what the marketability might be of her comical epistolary. “Unlikely” was the answer. Comedy is nearly impossible to pull off and novels...
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