Editor Interview: The Rumpus

Artful, authentic work.

I am always stretched for time, but I try to stay current with a few different publications: Guernica, Catapult, Honey Literary, The Believer, Diagram. I obviously love Barrelhouse, and I am very impressed by their conference in addition to their journal.

Oh I absolutely cannot decide! I will say though, that in the past year or so we've published a lot of amazing essays by queer writers.

The Rumpus publishes such a wide variety of writing. We have personal essays, critical essays, interviews, book reviews, film and television reviews, cultural commentary pieces, comics and political cartoons, original fiction, ad soon, original poetry. I think we are unique in the breadth of what we publish, and that we seek to do so without compromising quality.

Read our Writer's Guidelines! Seriously. They are there to help you send in the best submission possible. Oh, and follow the guidelines. You'd be surprised how many people don't. Following that, the best thing to do is read The Rumpus. There is no better way to understand what we like to publish than to read what we've recently been publishing. And please, send a piece in only once you feel it is the final draft. And never be afraid to submit! The worst you'll get is a polite rejection note, and sometimes, we may reject a piece but encourage the author to submit again. Once you've made sure you are following our guidelines and are submitting to the correct section, go ahead and press "submit"!

One that follows the Writer's Guidelines :) I don't think there is an ideal submission, given the variety of what we publish.

Submitters often miss that we do not take pitches for essays. We do accept pitches for book reviews and interviews, but we like to see finished essays, especially from writers we haven't worked with before. And make it easy for us to get in touch! Include an email address in your cover note. And please, please let us know if you are sending a simultaneous submission. We are fine with them, but we do need to know. Lastly, we do not publish work that has appeared online before, even if only on a personal blog.

The honest answer here is no, and we don't especially care about previous publication credits. We choose what we publish based on the quality of the writing, not the resume of the writer.

Each editor would need to answer this herself. But when a piece comes to me, I do usually read the whole thing. There are occasions where I can tell right off the bat that a piece is not for us, but I'll usually read it through anyhow so I can send a kind rejection note that indicates I've given the piece time and thought.

Again, this will very from section to section. The Essays team has a different process than the Interviews team which has a different process than the Fiction section, etc. Often, what determines if it's going straight to the editor or being vetted by readers and Assistant Editors first is the amount of submissions that section receives. Essays, Fiction, and Poetry receive a tremendous volume of submissions and it would be a huge undertaking for one individual. Also, the editorial staff works on a volunteer basis, and they have real-life, pay-the-rent jobs.

It wildly depends on the day of the week. I often don't read submissions until fairly late in the process, so a piece has usually been bumped up by one or two sets of eyes before it gets to me. I usually like to read things twice, though. The first pass is a gut-check, and then a day or two later, I'll check in with myself and how I'm feeling about the piece, and then I'll go back to see if that feeling stays.

This will vary from editor to editor. I keep saying that, I know—but it's the truth. Every editor has her own way of working with her writers. Most of our editors will work closely with the authors whose work is accepted and will suggest substantive edits, and yes, authors approve the final draft. Once a piece makes it way to me, we typically don't send back copyedits for site style and grammar, but substantive edits always require author approval.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer editing or thoughts on work that is not accepted for publication. Because our editorial staff is all-volunteer, they just don't have the time.

We do! And I am delighted to say that a number of our pieces have been selected for those awards.