Daniel Alarcón, Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Ha Jin, Esmeralda Santiago, and Gary Shteyngart. Illustration by Jen Rickard BlairThrough a series of inter…
Essays
Bonifacio Global City, Manila, 2015. photo: jason reblando In 2015, while on a Fulbright research fellowship in the Philippines, I went on a walking tour of Intramuros, the famed walled city in M…
The missing persons bulletin board at Navotas City Police Station in Metro Manila, June 2017. Photo courtesy of the authorDo so many opportunities to bear witness only create opportunitie…
photos: shevaun williams & associates After being visibly moved by dance adaptations of four of her poems, Dr. Nelson delivered the following keynote to the packed audience in attendance,…
A statue of a young Carver at the George Washington Carver National Monument. photo: jinx!/flickrHayan Charara, a poet, editor, essayist, and children’s book author, nominated Marilyn Nelson…
The Seer, by Maia Cruz PalileoA writer undergoes a transformation while overcoming a series of obstacles as she works to reunite her mother with her mother’s siblings in the Philipp…
Mohammed Ghani Hikmat’s Save Iraqi Culture sculpture, featuring ancient Sumerian cuneiform script, is located in Baghdad’s Mansour District. The figure with multiple hands represents the diff…
illustration: jen rickard blairOn the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, an Iranian writer (and devoted Brautigan reader) considers how he, perhaps even…
Offering tea in the Qadia/Rwanga IDP (internally displaced persons) camp, in the western Dohuk governorate of northern Iraq. As of February 2017, the population of the camp was 14,762 (including some…
Border village in winter, Turkey. Photo: Nedret BenzetReturning to the Bulgaria of her childhood, the author chronicles the insidious damage that a culture of hard borders inflicted on its su…
The kultrún is the quintessential Mapuche instrument. A drum of carved wood and animal hide, it is traditionally played by a machi, or Mapuche shaman, during rituals and celebrations. Al…
Jaume Plensa’s Tolerance statue and Rosemont Pedestrian Bridge, Houston, Texas / Photo by Patrick FellerIf a profligate comes to you with news, make sure you understand it (…
Photo: Daniel Tellman / FlickrSocieties venerate their storytellers almost as much as the stories. We talk about the wonders that stories can create, the ways they can change the…
An old Japanese maple in the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis / Photo by Kent Burgess thewaysofthegarden.squarespace.comIn this brief essay, poet and translator H. L. Hi…
Photo by C. P. Ewing / FlickrRumi remains the most popular poet in America today. To many who claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” his poems represent direct spiritual connection with…
Agostino Arrivabene (b. 1967, Italy), Androgynous, 2016, oil, gold leaf on linen, 50x40cm. Courtesy of the artist.Religion is at its best when it becomes a countercultural force;…
Photo: Fardo Dopstra (Fardodopstra.com)The tradition of toast-giving has followed my family through centuries and continents. This essay tells the tale of one family’s survival and the toasts—poig…
Clockwise from Top: Ama Ata Aidoo, Aracelis Girmay, Patricia Jabbeh WesleyTaking stock of the African Poetry Book Fund’s project to bring contemporary African poetry into the fol…
Photo: Miami Herald / GettyFor some years, Enrique Ferrari, known in Buenos Aires as Kike (kee-Kay), lived in the United States. His stay ended the day a traffic cop asked him for his pap…
Photo: Jason DevaunThe binaries of life bite at 3 a.m.You don’t need to fast-forward time.Envision vanishing before it happens.For those who care to lo…
Each year, writers and musicians from across the globe converge in Kosovo for the three-day Festival of Literature in Orllan, a vibrant celebration of local and international literature. Here, poe…
Isolation: Companion of Conscience, by Georgitta J. ValiyamattamIconoclast Indian novelist Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower, set in the maximum city of Mumbai, is not only the f…
Migratory art refers to works that are visual (or aural) representations of the act of migration, made by immigrants. The concepts of body horror, evolution, and audio stimuli illuminate their aes…
Native Nations Rise protest. Photo by Victoria Pickering/FlickrI’m mixed but that doesn’t mean I’m mixed up—it just means my parents fell in love across a racial and cultural divide that split my bloo…
America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Current (2005), acrylic on steel, 18 x 18 in, part of the Greater Vehicle series The innovator isn’t important. It’s whoever has the watershed momen…
December 17, 2025
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October 21, 2025
