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The Attic
You could say I was an atticist— In college, I lived in an attic—in a house behind a house—part of an expansive cooperative of twenty-five undergrads, hippies, and drifters. The attic was like most...
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Jane Austen in Pakistan: A Conversation with Soniah Kamal
Soniah Kamal’s second novel, Unmarriageable, forthcoming from Ballantine Books on January 22, is a delightful rendition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, transported to Pakistan. Set in the...
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Life after Death: A Conversation with Tessa Hadley
Late in the Day differs from Tessa Hadley’s six previous novels in that it features two central male characters, has very little emphasis on children, and follows a much longer story arc. University...
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from I Am Yours
I don’t know how to drive. I dodged lessons offered by Papa during high school. The occasional nightmare visits me still, where I crash his Mercedes. I’ve never sat behind the wheel of that car but I...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Man from Washington
Croydon came out from the kitchen and onto the front porch and there he was, the man from Washington, toeing a chair out from under the patio table with a loafer like an alligator snout. Croydon...
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Good Enough: Foraging for Answers with Mary Oliver
“Lucretius just presents this marvelous and important idea that what we are made of will make something else… There is no nothingness. With these little atoms that run around too little for us to see,...
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Marriage of a Different Kind
I’m on an overnight train from Indore to Ahmedabad with Ma to meet with a prospective suitor. We sit in the general compartment, in the dark, until the generator can kick in and we can move to our...
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Language of Love
The boy I loved in high school wears pink jeans to our twentieth reunion. His blond hair is not as floppy as I remember, but he smooths it back from his forehead with a familiar nervous motion. He...
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Reclaiming Our Power: A Conversation with Reema Zaman
She cooked and cleaned and catered to his every need; he wiped off her makeup when he thought she was wearing too much. She was afraid to speak openly; he ranted about having “sister wives.” She...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Three Flash Fictions by Rachel Hannigan
“Dead,” or “Spring” <> Imagine the artist at an art gallery party. Is she wearing a skirt, or pants? She arrives alone. Does she first turn to the bar, or to the guests? Does she drink...
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The Language of What Happened to Us
I was in college, engaged and planning my wedding, and back home in Virginia on the last break I would have before I finished finals and returned for my wedding. The twelve-year-old I was babysitting...
View ArticleLeaving a Record: Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
A few days before leaving on our vacation to Mexico City, my girlfriend and I began to wonder if we needed visas to enter the country. We are anxious people, but also privileged ones. A quick Google...
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #164: Sarah McColl
This recent debut tugged on my heartstrings so much they looked like a game of Cat’s Cradle by the time I finished reading it. In her resplendent memoir, Joy Enough, Sarah McColl explores the spaces...
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Redefining Manhood: A Conversation with James Hornor
Ironically, The Hollywood Reporter’s 2018 Women in Entertainment gala began with remarks on the state of men. Hannah Gadsby’s opening speech went viral after she called out “The Jimmys” of late-night...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Orientation
The diagnosis was not immediately devastating. In fact, Henry felt something like enthusiasm rush through him. It’s really happening, he thought. He was sitting in a light brown leather armchair on the...
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Be Like the Woman
Step 1. Be like the baby. Make the bottle. Clean the bottle. Wipe the mouth. Wipe the butt. Put on a new diaper. Throw out the wipes. Tickle the baby. Hug the baby. Wash the baby. I do the park things....
View ArticleWhen Our Inner Voices Speak: Reema Zaman’s I Am Yours
Reema Zaman calls her utterly unique debut, I Am Yours, a “shared memoir” because she wrote it with the help of voice in her head: one she calls “imaginary friend, art, muse, reader, guardian angel,...
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Rumpus Original Fiction: In the Large Room Where Your Future Is Kept
S— fingered a compact of highlighting cream, a shade labeled Prismatic Peon, comparing it to another shade, Obsequious Lace. If she chose wisely, she’d look like she’d slept a proper eight hours. If...
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Navigating by the Right Stars: A Conversation with Briallen Hopper
The primary subject of Briallen Hopper’s first book, Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions, is relationships and love outside of marriage. In doing so Hopper writes about books like Moby-Dick and Girls...
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The Supplicant Undertaker
My father stands in the pool and watches me swim. California Redwoods cast blue shadows over the deep end. He holds his hands out for me to swim to, standing with his back to the dimensions of the...
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