In December 2021, writer Alex McMillan created the “Yankee Candle’s Stages of Abstraction.” They described a series of increasingly abstract Yankee Candle scents. The lower levels represent physical ...

Gwendolyn expressed her worry despite the present lecture. Mr. Caulier yanked back his words to a stop. He was explaining to his students the device of doppelgängers and their regular occurrence in ...

We turned twenty-two and grew critical of our mothers. Before that, as teenagers, we were often angry, but less critical. Those of us who were allowed to yell, yelled. Those who weren’t allowed ...

He never shows during the day, even when I sit on the porch to watch for him. But this morning, dawn not yet arrived, he pokes a teeny hand out with nails that curl into spirals on only four digits,… ...

In 1985, Lily loses her right eye to a strand of barbed wire. In 1986, she begins burying her teeth. I watch her from the kitchen window. She digs with her hands, pulls the tooth from her pocket and ...

I have a scar that runs from my hip to my knee, and for years I described it the way a doctor would: fracture, plate, six screws. The morning before the surgery, I remember staring at the ceiling of a ...

and here we are, inside on the couch. That’s why we live here. Every day is gorgeous and 60 is the new sexy stash.

“I have written myself out of silence and back into existence,” Troung Tran writes in his memoir, How to Exi(s)t (City Lights Books, 2026). With every word, Tran breaks the silence that marked his ...

I feel both the passion and protective snobbery of a true fan when it comes to short stories. Like any devotee, I take pleasure in my sense of ownership, grumbling when I see a flub, giving a ...

**This short story won the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean Me and Val standing at the edge of the water, just above where Pagua River mouth open ...

Amina Washington is an African American and Afro-Caribbean emerging writer from Brooklyn, New York. She is a 2026 Periplus Fellow and was named a finalist for the 2026 Kurt Vonnegut Prize in ...

The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to ...