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The Rumpus
@therumpus.net
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Independent since 2009. Read The Rumpus Magazine. Become a Member. Receive Letters in the Mail from Authors. Join a dynamic, global community.

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therumpus.net
"I wonder how many of us spend our adult lives trying to get back to a home that no longer exists. Trying to get away from it, too."

Our next Letter in the Mail comes from Rebecca Wait! Subscribe to LITM by December 31 to receive Rebecca's missive straight to your mailbox!

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December 29, 2025 at 9:00 PM
therumpus.net
“And the light fell like a sheet of warm, glowing metal over you. In its concentrating power you saw the terror of your life distilled, and you felt like you would live forever.”

From “The Femcel Catalog a.k.a. The Annals of Obsession," new original fiction by Lydia Wei.

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December 27, 2025 at 8:00 PM
therumpus.net
“...this storm is not destructive—it reveals. It heals.”

Chisaraokwu Asomugha, MD reviews Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home (@weslpress.bsky.social).

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The cited quote and information written in black against a grid of white and light pink boxes. In the upper lefthand corner is the book cover for Room Swept Home
December 26, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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karenpalmer.bsky.social
(Oh look, here's my giant face yet again.) I spoke with @jennybartoy.bsky.social for @therumpus.net about SHE'S UNDER HERE. Just what you wanted to read on Xmas Eve, right?

therumpus.net/2025/12/23/d...
Distance from Trauma by Writing the Memoir Self as a Character in a Novel: A Conversation with Karen Palmer - The Rumpus
“The thing about writing a memoir is, if you write yourself into a corner, you can only get out by telling the truth. Making something up to bridge a problem area is not available to you. With a novel...
therumpus.net
December 24, 2025 at 3:45 PM
therumpus.net
“...we have no choice but to hold a mirror to ourselves, the abysses in which we cultivate our loneliness, and which, we too, try to survive.”

@murmurshewrote.bsky.social reviews @appletwigli.bsky.social's Things in Nature Merely Grow (@fsgbooks.bsky.social).

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The cited quote and information written in black against a grid of light blue and white squares. In the upper lefthand corner is the book cover for Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow.
December 24, 2025 at 3:01 PM
therumpus.net
"That’s maybe what literature is about. The meaning making happens when someone reads it."

Alyssa Oursler interviews Issa Quincy about Absence (@twodollarradio.bsky.social).

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December 23, 2025 at 9:01 PM
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murmurshewrote.bsky.social
My review of Yiyun Li's THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW is up at @therumpus.net right now. A quietly devastating book but one for anyone grappling with loss (aren't we all?)

therumpus.net/2025/12/18/a...
And the Now: on "Things in Nature Merely Grow" by Yiyun Li - The Rumpus
"The problem: What if the tragedy has no end point? In Yiyun Li’s latest memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow, the author spurns the term “grief” and its attachment to endings. For Li, the definition o...
therumpus.net
December 19, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by The Rumpus
bettybooks.bsky.social
What happens when the story you grew up with isn’t the whole truth? 🌊

In a recent interview with @therumpus.net, Betty author @joannackalbus.bsky.social talks about writing The Boat Not Taken, reckoning with her family history, and uncovering what was left unsaid.

Learn more: bit.ly/495sl0x
December 23, 2025 at 7:03 PM
therumpus.net
"A failed musical became something deeply personal: my first novel."

Taking Back Time: Ursula Villarreal-Moura interviews Quiara Alegría Hudes about The White Hot (One World).

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December 22, 2025 at 3:30 PM
therumpus.net
"...too much saturation and enchantment can be perilous."

Hospitality Training and Taking Care of the Reader: Phyllis Grant interviews Gabrielle Hamilton about Next of Kin (@penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social).

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December 19, 2025 at 12:00 AM
therumpus.net
“A feast. A hole, a heart. / Entrails. Daily rites, / making right. Doilies / on a plate.” \

From "Sacrifice," a new original poem by Annie Kantar.

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December 18, 2025 at 8:00 PM
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"Now that I am old, I look just like her. I look in the mirror and say that’s my Omai. What is she doing in the mirror?"

Elizabeth Zertuche interviews Joanna Choi Kalbus about The Boat Not Taken.

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December 16, 2025 at 9:02 PM
therumpus.net
“How, as an eel, would I know I was good? How would I convince myself I was happy?”

From "The Eeling," new original fiction by @ginathayer.bsky.social.

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December 16, 2025 at 3:03 PM
therumpus.net
“Readers should expect to be delighted by a poet who touches subtly yet incisively on the friction between the different selves we become, moving between languages and nations.”

Luis Torres reviews @brentameneyro.bsky.social’s A Face Out of Clay (@upcolorado.bsky.social).

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December 15, 2025 at 10:01 PM
therumpus.net
“I don’t know if I will smell like you in forty years, / If the silver of my hair will catch the same light.”

From “The Evening Leaves Debris on the Streets of California," a new original poem by @hanawiderman.bsky.social.

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December 15, 2025 at 5:03 PM
therumpus.net
"The traces of exploitation, resource drain, and recklessness are impossible to detangle from the seduction of power, wealth, and privilege."

@egjames.bsky.social interviews @cleyvisnatera.bsky.social about The Grand Paloma Resort (Ballantine Books).

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The cited information but not the quote written in white against Natera's author photo. In the lower righthand corner is the book cover for The Grand Paloma Resort with the full Rumpus logo over top in white.
December 14, 2025 at 9:01 PM
therumpus.net
“In the pale light of the windowsill your tongue stretches, tastebuds catching the last dregs of sun. It must be hungry, you think.”

From "Mother Tongue," new original fiction by Ocean Teu.

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December 14, 2025 at 3:01 PM
therumpus.net
“Another thing they don’t tell you when your kid is diagnosed with cancer: the answer to everything they ask for is going to be yes.”

From "Grim," a new original essay by Elizabeth Austin.

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December 13, 2025 at 10:00 PM
therumpus.net
"All of us are searching for answers for something in our lives."

It's hard to be a Person: @meganeolaughlin.bsky.social interviews @tinhouse.bsky.social A Silent Treatment (Tin House).

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December 13, 2025 at 5:03 PM
therumpus.net
“Let’s see—the earliest roads were made / by animals, Google tells me, which doesn’t really answer my question. / Let’s say a border is less about division and more about contact.”

From "Lesson," one of two new original poems by @cooperdart.bsky.social.

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December 12, 2025 at 9:02 PM
therumpus.net
"I want everyone to be able to play Bingo but I don't want to have anything to do with it, personally."

Our next Letter in the Mail (from authors!) comes from Women's Hotel author Daniel M. Lavery.

Subscribe to LITM by December 14 to receive Daniel's IRL letter: buff.ly/O4uely0
December 12, 2025 at 7:30 PM
therumpus.net
“...my daughter lifts her hand up off the handlebars & her bike wobbles & she holds it steady & she looks at me & she does not see all my past selves & the sun is shining through the trees...”

From "On a street named after a forest," a new original essay by Laura Price Steele.

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December 12, 2025 at 3:01 PM
therumpus.net
"There’s something about the expectation of control in all of our media right now that is very sinister to me. I don’t think it’s a good path..."

@explodingarrow.bsky.social interviews Aiden Arata about You Have a New Memory (@grandcentralpub.bsky.social).

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December 11, 2025 at 10:01 PM
therumpus.net
We've got one last desk to show you, and it belongs to Sky Daddy author Katie Folk @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social. Join us Tue., Dec. 16 at 3pm EST/12pm PST as we say farewell to @gregmania.bsky.social who has steered the Show Us Your Desk ship with style, curiosity, and boatloads of humor.
December 11, 2025 at 5:01 PM
therumpus.net
“Her graceful, funny stories of largely internal horrors are a salve to those who fear that their very selves are, in some small and critical way, wrong...”

From @tessmcgeer.bsky.social's latest installment of Books That Made Me Gay: Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

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December 9, 2025 at 8:01 PM