Last year, publishing power couple Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman acquired beloved online lit mag The Rumpus. Today, the new leaders celebrated the launch of their rebranded site with new essays, fiction, and a fresh design.
The Rumpus was founded by writer Stephen Elliott and launched out of San Francisco in 2009. Under Elliott’s editorial purview, the site became one of our best and scrappiest online lit mags, launching the careers of writers like Cheryl Strayed (aka “Dear Sugar”), Yumi Sakugawa, and Steve Almond.
Though the guard changed several times after Elliott’s complicated exit, The Rumpus has hung on, mostly as a volunteer-run labor of love. But with masthead support from fan/contributors like Gay, the site has been able to weather certain storms that have felled peers in cyberspace.
In some respects, the Gay-Millman acquisition is a homecoming. Gay served as a long time essays editor for the site. And as she shared in a statement last March, “The Rumpus was one of the first places where my writing found a significant audience, and it helped shape me into the writer I am today.”
So what’s up next for this new-old magazine?
Millman, who will serve as the site’s new culture editor and creative director, suggests a vibe shift is nigh.
“We’ll still be covering with the same rigor and integrity, fiction, essays, poetry, book reviews, author interviews, and so forth,” the podcast host told Publishers Weekly. “But we’re also going to include more design criticism, art criticism, and overall cultural coverage. The soul of the writing and the coverage will be very similar; topically, it will be different.”
Both leaders have suggested the new site will not flinch from politics, or the concerns of the day. Gay plans to launch a companion Spanish-language vertical to appeal to a wider demographic of readers. And inspired by a chat with poet Reginald Dwayne Betts (the founder of Freedom Reads) the new editor also intends to launch a column that is edited and written by people who are or have been incarcerated.
In more general content news, a Rumpus feature planned for July will poll a swathe of creatives with the question, “What does freedom mean to you?” This reader hopes that will be a rebuttal to all the dubious America 250 content flooding orgs beholden to the neutered NEA.
But all that’s in the future. On today’s rebranded Rumpus, you can find an essay from Sheila Monaghan, a conversation with author Dave Housley, and two spanking new short stories.
Also, a briefly dormant site-sponsored book club is back in action. Monthly discussions with authors—open to all!—will kick off on June 30th at 7pm. The first guest is Ann Patchett; Millman will lead a discussion centered around her latest novel, Whistler. Readers can register here.
