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@therumpus.net"To be a prey animal then is to survive a litany of trials: tests of error, and of gentleness. To live with terror passed down in the blood."
From "Transparent Horses," new poetry by Izzy Toy Rettke.
@therumpus.net"There’s a scratch of electricity behind my eyes, that familiar vertiginous sway, but I don’t disappear. I stay right here in the snow, moving toward the light, caught in an orbit that tugs me into the woods."
From "Liturgy of Teeth," new fiction by Joshua Allen Sorrells.
@therumpus.net"So what is KATSEYE? A girl group, yes, but also a girl group-shaped concept."
In our newest culture essay, @missmollymary.bsky.social analyzes her own fascination with the reality-show-created girl group KATSEYE.
@therumpus.net"My prized lump, my eldest-born, / what wouldn’t I do for it? Love it or try / desperately to fix it, the same difference."
From "Cyst with Teeth," one of two new poems by Angelica Whitehorne.
@therumpus.net"I find myself paralyzed by language more often than not, and yet here I am, engaged in an interview in which I am supposed to be the writer."
Returning to the Self: Tryphena Yeboah interviews Truong Tran about How to Exi(s)t (@citylightsbooks.bsky.social).
@therumpus.net"she’d / dry-heaved in the parking lot / so many people / so many people / she said mama’s fine and / unbuckled her children"
From "El Paso Walmart in Two Parts," new poetry by Samantha Strong Murphey.
@therumpus.net"Quizás es, incluso, lo más mexicano de mi escritura: esta relación con el humor y con el humor negro. La irreverencia."
Comunidad y escritura: una conversación con Laia Jufresa, escrito por Katherine Tilghman.
Lee la conversación: buff.ly/7Dds1GC
@therumpus.net"I have spent a lot of time coming up with things I 'need' to be doing other than this comic."
From "The Hardest Lesson Learned the Hardest Way," a new comic by @iamsuzanneweber.bsky.social.
@therumpus.net“I wonder if the rules around motherhood are harder to see because they don’t look like rules. They sound like your own voice."
The correspondence between our two favorite letter writers continues this week with Monica's letter "We Expect Too Much from Mothers."
@therumpus.net"My mom mourned all her children, their watermarked class photos pasted on our fridge and in her wallet, but I was the one who remained."
From "Elmo" by Amina Washington, winner of the 2026 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize.
@therumpus.net"If Jemma serious about this writing business, she need to be prepared to ride it far as she can, past what white folk can see. Maybe even past where I can see."
From "Claim," new fiction by @kaylalightner.bsky.social.
@therumpus.net"Ideology is easy to reject. The question of what women should want, and which path will deliver it, is harder to untangle..."
"Damned if You Do: On Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear" by Erin Caldwell Antler.
@therumpus.net"I have to tell you: there's something utterly heartbreaking about putting a book you wrote out into the world."
Our next Letters in the Mail (from authors!) entrant is from Nina LaCour, author of Meet Me in the Garden (@flatironbooks.bsky.social).
Subscribe to LITM now: buff.ly/Lj7DxpO
@therumpus.net"Rejections took a toll...but it was important because the feedback that agents gave helped me take my draft to the next step."
In today's Weekly newsletter, @chitalmehta.bsky.social discusses the publication of her debut novel.
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@therumpus.net"It was in the sermons, it was in the education system, it was in the vernacular of everyday conversations. It had not yet occurred to me, before that spring, that it could happen to me, too."
From "Play the Cards as They Lay," new nonfiction by Jack Ciontos.
@therumpus.net"Much is unchanged, but I am new. The world, dying, has rendered me vital. I see now that I am still glowing with possibility." From "Two by Two" by @cdonosowriter.bsky.social.
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@therumpus.net"The fluorescent light shone off Mr. Caulier’s greasy hair. A glassy, wet glow. He washed it nightly, scouring himself of the day’s grime and that rotting wood smell that permeated Birchland High School."
From "Delicates," by Grey Traynor.
@aimloiselle.bsky.socialReposted by @therumpus.netTonight
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The Schomburg
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@therumpus.net"He had been a caretaker since he was barely old enough to be called a man, in the middle of a genocide that the world has largely forgotten."
From "What We Are Allowed to Give," new nonfiction by Shaniyat Turani.
@therumpus.net"Why not / let the wheels come off the fucking thing, / laugh as the sun again puts on a brave face / this morning, fuming its doomed eternity?"
From "Not an Answer," one of two new poems by Jake Onyett.
