THE Latest
ESSAYS
National Poetry Month: Hua Xi
Shed Hairs In the middle of the room sat the most splendiferous anonymous tree, slowly losing its leaves.Yet as I […]
We Can and Should Go Home Again: Raye Hendrix’s What Good is Heaven
In a literary climate that elevates northern sensibilities, landscapes, and aesthetics—often met with something akin to scorn for the south—Raye […]
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by V. B. Borjen
Knossos did you ask the questionor know               that after we die                     wemigrate into our things irrelevant things            importantthings                  the cheap […]
National Poetry Month: Naomi Shihab Nye
Dear Children We do not wake up hating. We do not wake up better than anyone else. If someone says […]
“A black sheet between present and ancestors”: Kiran Bath’s Instructions for Banno
I started planning my nikkah with my mom a few weeks ago. At twenty-three, I never expected to wed so […]
ENOUGH: Three Poems – The Rumpus
ENOUGH is a Rumpus series devoted to creating a dedicated space for essays, poetry, fiction, comics, and artwork by women, […]
FICTION
Rumpus Original Fiction: Let All Our Ghosts Depart
The summer after I graduated high school, my mother and I took a trip to India. She wanted to show […]
Rumpus Original Fiction: Get Gone
After I dropped out of college, I worked at a diner near downtown Orlando that served breakfast all day. The […]
Rumpus Original Fiction: Loss – The Rumpus
Every night, my daughter spent the minutes before bed diligently writing in the notebook she’d bought at her school bookfair. […]
Rumpus Original Fiction: Pulmonary – The Rumpus
i: minimalist living I build a home inside my mother’s cancer-riddled lungs. This is a product of my belief that if […]
Rumpus Original Fiction: Hóngmén Banquet
The private banquet room was raucous, adrift with the sound of popping oil and clinking glasses. The waitress noted that […]
Rumpus Original Fiction: The Photograph
Lumumba Street, where our house stood among rows of other rental blocks in a multicolored collage, had no order. But […]
INTERVIEWS
From Alternative Facts to Political Fictions: A Conversation with Emily Greenberg
On January 27, 2017, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order that temporarily banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. […]
We Are Not Free: A Conversation with Roberto Carlos Garcia
Traveling Freely (Curbstone Press, 2024), Roberto Carlos Garcia’s collection of essays, explores Blackness through an Afro-Diasporic lens. Garcia skillfully explores […]
Love and Technology in the Time of Climate Change: A Conversation with Anita Felicelli
Technology exists to make our lives easier and more convenient, or at least that was the common adage decades ago […]
To Write about the Way You Read is to Write about the Way You Live: A Conversation with Sarah Chihaya
Sarah Chihaya, author of Bibliophobia: A Memoir (Random House, 2025), gives us an intensely personal examination of reading, writing, and […]
There Would Still Be Love: A Conversation with Matthew Nienow
Matthew Nienow’s poetry collection If Nothing (Alice James Books, 2025) is a vivid exploration of addiction and sobriety, marriage and […]
Feral Feminisms in Noir: A Conversation with Kirsten Sundberg LunstrumÂ
Under the hard rain of the Pacific Northwest winter of 1951, two prison guards discover a growling, wild-eyed girl surviving […]
POETRY
National Poetry Month: Sadie Dupuis
My Accomplishments Insisting on the truthdoes not serve the painter. Five hundred horses rundown the trail of blood and thenfive hundred […]
National Poetry Month: Kieron Walquist
*** Author photograph by Bhion Achimba Kieron Walquist Kieron Walquist [he/they] holds an MFA from Washington University […]
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Saba Keramati
Mercy Has Been Called A Gentle Rain After the funeral I didn’t know how best to comfort you,and so you […]
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Zain Aslam
Valentin Stüberl My father washed the beer glasses then stacked them. He watched the air turn the drinks into cadavers. […]
Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Gabrielle Spear
Rwanda: The Israel of Africa after Solmaz Sharif Boosting Africa ties,Israel opens first embassy in Rwanda “both with histories largely […]
A Poetics of Witness: Jeddie Sophronius’s Interrogation Records
As an undergraduate, as part of a module on Tragedy, my supervisor assigned the 2012 film The Act of Killing, […]