The Rumpus
Online/Digital
At The Rumpus, we know how easy it is to find pop culture on the internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how. We strive to be a platform for marginalized voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere, and to lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers we love. We work to shine a light on stories that build bridges, tear down walls, and speak truth to power.
The Rumpus launched in 2009. In January 2017, The Rumpus was purchased by Marisa Siegel, who had previously served as Managing Editor from 2014–2017.
We want to change the conversation. We want to introduce you to authors you’ve never heard of before and to provide perspective on books, films, and media that will make you look deeper. We believe that literature is community—and if reading The Rumpus makes you want more, we’ve got more! Sign up to participate in the Rumpus Book Club, Rumpus Poetry Book Club, Letters in the Mail, and Letters for Kids—each of these programs helps to keep The Rumpus in existence. And please sign up to receive our free overly personal newsletter, too!
We also hope you’ll contribute to The Rumpus by submitting your writing (check our Writer’s Guidelines) to keep our pages filled with goodness. The Rumpus is a literary barn-raising, where our writers, editors, illustrators, and readers are all indispensable to who we are. Source
Actions
Media Outlet details
| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
Similarweb UVM
|
Request pricing |
Comscore UVM
|
Request pricing |
Recent Articles
Search ArticlesTheir Clear Unobstructed View
Years after we had moved out, men in coveralls and yellow hard hats cleared our grove of avocado trees. The trees had been dead for decades, nothing but rotted trunks. Trees stood through my childhood, clawing upward past dirt and the mat of curved leaves. An excavator pulled the stumps. The eucalyptus were next, chainsawed limb by limb. The men swarmed over the house, tearing out the walls and floors, collapsing sheetrock and stucco, and carting away broken fixtures and stripped carpet.
Heaven, Hell, and Nowhere: Gregg Araki’s Changing Los Angeles
As a longtime fan of Gregg Araki, I was caught off guard by how, frankly, ugly I found I Want Your Sex. Even at their most sordid and grimy, Araki’s earlier films render Los Angeles beautiful: The camera lingers over bare skin, cheap motel rooms, fluorescent convenience stores, cigarette smoke. Lights pulse in nightclubs, shadows expand in the middle of the night, and beautiful young people dream and experiment, seeking transcendence through drugs, alcohol, sex.
The Missing Word
At twenty-two, I saw a film about Mahmoud Darwish at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. It opens with Darwish on Mount Nebo in Jordan, looking west toward Israel and Palestine. According to the Bible, this is the mountain from which Moses (Musa in Arabic) saw the Promised Land but did not enter it. By then Darwish had long been the poet most closely identified with Palestine, a towering figure across the Arab world.
Why Widow’s Bay Is Truly Peak Television
In episode 1 of Widow’s Bay, Apple TV’s latest hit series, the mayor of a remote New England island, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), courts a New York Times reporter (Bashir Salahuddin) in hopes of getting a write-up that will boost tourism. But Mayor Loftis is also hiding a huge secret—the frights, curses, and zombie-filled legends in the history of this island community are, in fact, gruesomely true.
Three Poems - The Rumpus
Twenty Questions for the Twin Boys who Spat in my Hair in Seventh Grade Why on a school bus returning from a field trip? Why the back of my head as I sat in the row ahead of you? Did you both spit or only one? Who followed whose cruel idea? Did my puffy blonde hair waterfall to my shoulders or was it in a ponytail my mother had meticulously slicked up, securing loose strands with mists of water?
Environmental Disaster, Erosion of Home: A Conversation with Stephanie Soileau
The bayous of Louisiana are disappearing. The people of Pelerin Parish in Stephanie Soileau’s debut, Should the Waters Take Us (Doubleday, 2026), have their own claim on the land, each straining to eke out a living from livelihoods they feel simultaneously indebted to and oppressed by. They are fighting to accept the many ways they are losing their home. I identify with the deep sense of loss that comes with your roots vanishing in the name of progress.
The Problem with Trans
Kathleen Truelove had everything. She was the most beloved children’s author in the world. Her books had been turned into films, a Broadway musical, and a theme park—the sort she had always dreamed of getting lost in as a child. She lived in an actual castle now with a drawbridge and a moat and a turret. She had an entire wing filled floor to ceiling with books, and an indoor swimming pool.
My Ma’s Hatred Grows Cavities Every Summer
She told me to be a dental hygenist. People will always hate someone, said my ma as she pressed a knife against my collarbone, the nice Swiss Army blade that Uncle Ric gave teenage me for my birthday after I started spending more time in the kitchen. I smiled and nodded and the motion nicked my skin. I made a mental note to wash the knife before the next time I went camping. The calculus was simple enough. My preferred major: finance, classified as “too masculine” by my ma.
Who Gets to Decide What Liberation Looks Like?
Dear Rebecca, I read your response and, the way I see it, have three choices. I could stay inside the argument. We could keep going back and forth about equity and desire, and whether driving three hours to see a younger man because I wanted to was me finally shaking off a lifetime of Mormon shame or evidence that I was giving too much away. There’s plenty to argue about there. I could argue that wanting to give something doesn’t automatically make the giving desperate.
Queering Taxonomies: A Conversation with Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn
Something interesting happens when plants and humans meet. Whether secret, paradisal, or haunted, the garden is one of our very first metaphors. From the myth of Narcissus to Klimt’s kaleidoscopic poppies, narratives of flowers confront us with our desire for beauty, control, transformation, and violence. In Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn’s second collection of essays, I Have This Thing for Flowers, she digs in this rich soil to unearth the roots of her own romantic and platonic relationships.