Photo provided by Nina Kossman
A family’s history, Soviet history, and the role of a father’s stamp collection.
Do you see this little metal box? It was surely unusual for its time—…
Creative Nonfiction
“Demeter and Persephone Terracotta Myrina 100 BCE” by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 A car racing down an empty steppe highway frames this essay from Kazak…
M. Florine Démosthène, Wounds #1, collage on paper, 22 x 30 in. / Courtesy of the artist There was once a beautiful little bear called Baby Bear. One day, Baby Bear went for a wa…
M. Florine Démosthène, But I Have To, collage on paper, 44 x 60 in. / Courtesy of the artist A djeli (commonly known as a griot) is a West African storyteller who is the keeper o…
Illustration by Maya Ish-Shalom Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes. Popol Twenty-three…
Illustration by Avery Holmes “Bakery Scent is a complex that cannot be dismantled or piecemealed,” yet the author still searches for that perfect madeleine, especially the one that can no…
Photo by Krisztian Matyas / Unsplash “Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her…
Armando Diaz / Flickr In that swirl of ideas, stuck in the middle of that overpopulation of bodies, I lose my cardboard piece. That is a sign too, another type of sign, a message from the…
Photo: Havana, Cuba by Tiago Claro / Unsplash In this work of creative nonfiction from Cuba, plague is something common shared with those who lived in Thebes. I carefully open a pre…
IN SEPTEMBER, Abrams Books will publish Sarah Mirk’s stories of ten people who spent time at Guantánamo since the opening of Camp X-Ray in 2002, including service members, prisoners,…
Photo: José Pablo Iglesias / Unsplash A girl learns her first lessons about cheating and death at her grandparents’ house, playing cards and Scrabble and listening to them read from…
Photo: Luiz Guimaraes / Unsplash Follow a writer-flâneuse on a New York City odyssey, appreciating life’s smaller miracles in a city with many entry points. West 32nd / Broadway. Th…
“Where are you from?” a man, a black man, asks me at a cocktail party. The answer rolls in my mouth like a rock. “South Africa,” I say. My voice is bright, my eyes wide, as if I’m participating in…
PHOTO: Florian Wehde / Unsplash In Eileen Chang’s The Sequel, there is an essay entitled “On Eating Cakes and Drawing Cakes to Stave Off Hunger” that references the Bluebird Café nea…
PHOTO: Larah Vidotto In this piece of flash memoir, a writer reflects on stereotypes, how Ireland has changed, and an aunt stuck in time. Dear foreigner, tell me again how it is ste…
Left: Han Chang and his brother Eliot at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago (2001). Right: The author's mother at Xitou National Park in Taiwan (1989). Court…
Iron, Uranium, Calcium, Gold, Praseodymium, Rubidium, Stontium, and Lead books. Illustration by Shayna Pond{CR}Chromium books that are all shiny surface.…
Photo: PixabayThese two short meditations by Mexican writer Fabio Morábito both circle back to the same place: language’s confounding determination to elude our dominion.The…
Julie Buffalohead (Ponca), The Trail (2015), acrylic, ink, graphite on Lokta paper, ca. 30 x 60 in / By permission of the Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis (bockleygallery.com)The author considers how…
Jarrod Da’ (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Solar Winds (2016), soft pastel, 24 x 30 in / Courtesy of the artist (www.jarrodda.com)“Tuolumne River. My father took me there when I was a baby to sh…
Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo / Korean), There and Back Again (2012), digital image printed on antique ledger paper, 4 x 6 in / Courtesy of the artistThe day of my mother’s funeral service I separat…
