Morning Coffee
Back in the saddleWhen Journey Round My Skull decides to clear out its image vaults, we are all the better for it.A plant that eats rats. Yes. Plant. Eats. Rat.Historic bridges of the United States....
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I assure you our heart is in the right place.We aren’t sure if we love this or hate this, but damn it all it’s Friday and we are linking to some hipster puppies.This year’s Olympic medals will be made...
View ArticleA Disappearing Past
There are currently two living veterans from World War I. Pondering what it means to be the last first-hand witnesses to an era or a major historical event is the subject of Evan Fleischer’s essay,...
View ArticleBoyfriends: Thom
He waits for a drink but the boy’s idle, watching girls near the shore. He signals for him, his arm rising up against the bright sun and the girls snicker, their lips pink, teeth bright and wet. We met...
View ArticleThebes
Oh, my soul murmured, as your mouth confessed to mine.–Else Lasker-Schüler, “Es kommt der Abend” (“The evening comes”)[1]Else Lasker-Schüler confessed. But unlike many of her compatriots in the...
View ArticleThis Week in Short Fiction
This is the week of fantastical fiction, of the weird and the magical, of re-imagining fairy tales and urban legends, of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. On Tuesday, a new edition...
View ArticleEdith Wharton’s Lost Story
An unpublished Edith Wharton story was recently discovered at Yale University by Dr. Alice Kelly. It’s called “The Field of Honour” and is set during World War I:Wharton was very much engaged with the...
View ArticleWhat They Never Told Me, What I Never Asked: Reflecting on Roots and Writing
While the miracle of analyzing your DNA can inform you of the origins of your ancestry, it will not offer you much about what they experienced, what they thought, what they felt, learned or endured in...
View ArticleTORCH: Blood Trauma
My mother left when I was two. When I was five, I asked my father to tell me the story of her leaving, the story of the end of their marriage, of her absence. He said that she believed he could give me...
View ArticleEvery Woman Is a Nation unto Herself: A Conversation with Sabina Murray
Sabina Murray lives and writes with a brio you might associate with another era: one in which elections alone do not shake some segment of the populace into an awareness of moral issues and gallows...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #103: Andrew Battershill
Andrew Battershill’s debut novel, Pillow, heeds the advice of its subject matter and enters the realm of the surreal and imagined. Picture the French Surrealists recast as mobsters running a crime ring...
View ArticleThe Last Poem I Loved: The Waste Land
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring and rain. It is March, almost April, and the year feels like a spool of days...
View ArticleHow Patterns Break: Talking with Linda Bierds
As a poet, Linda Bierds is a rare find. She’s a devoted researcher, a caring teacher, and a transcendent image-maker. Her work draws on ekphrasis, historical personae, scientific thinking, and...
View ArticleAbstracting Yourself: A Conversation with Robin Hemley
I first met Robin Hemley at the Portland airport baggage claim before AWP 2019. He spoke enthusiastically about both the upcoming conference and the Authors at Large writing program, and I felt...
View ArticleThe Promise of Werfel’s Musa Dagh: Portraying Genocide in Fiction
Three days before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in 2017, I requested the afternoon off to attend an opening night showing of The Promise with my father. Half-full, too loud, and littered with...
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