The Rumpus is betting on Spanish-language readers

By Andy — 2026-08-14 — Literary News

I picked up a copy of The Rumpus once, years back. It was scraped together like so many scrappy indie mags—volunteer-run, barely holding on, the kind of place where real writing lived because nobody had money to polish it into something safe.

That was before Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman bought it last May. And before they just announced something that shouldn't be this unusual, but is.

The Rumpus is launching El Alboroto. A Spanish-language vertical expanding and diversifying its audience. Not translating English work backwards into Spanish like some afterthought. Original work in Spanish spanning fiction, nonfiction and poetry, edited by Alejandra Márquez, an Associate Professor of Spanish at Michigan State University, plus Vasthi Jean-Michel, a Haitian-born physician who speaks fluently English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. Real editors. Not a tokenism hire.

The original press release made a point about language itself—that writing and publishing in Spanish in the U.S. "is not a neutral act." Which is another way of saying it's political. It's a choice. Gay and Millman have spent the last few months proving they're not interested in cheap moves.

Six months after taking over a magazine that was, let's be honest, dying quietly, they've already redesigned the site, increased pay rates to $500 for prose and $200 for poetry, launched editorial fellowships, and now they're taking a real shot at the Spanish-language literary community in America. Not as a gesture. As core business.

The first edition included contributors from Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico. No name-checking here—actual writers doing actual work across the genres. The magazine publishes fiction, poetry, essays, cultural criticism, interviews, comics. The same rigor they're applying to the English side.

Gay served as essays editor for The Rumpus early on, and has said the magazine "helped shape me into the writer I am today". So this isn't a stranger's project. It's someone coming back to a place she cares about and deciding to expand it properly. Not quickly. Not to score points. But to actually serve readers who've been neglected by most English-language lit mags.

Whether it works depends on the usual things. Whether the writing is worth reading. Whether the editors keep their standards up. Whether American literary readers—even Spanish-speaking ones—still care enough to show up. Nothing's guaranteed. But at least someone's trying it like they mean it.