One time, I texted my close friends and family to ask what they’d been reading recently and their thoughts about that book. It was a completely random question, but thankfully, no one was annoyed. Som…
Creative Nonfiction
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We are never “just reading.” When I’m reading, I’m doing multiple things at once. I am reflecting on my past mistakes at the same time I’m learning about the future of AI and technology. In the proces… -
Photo by Tim Mossholder / Unsplash.com In a world dictated by mechanical rhythms, how can we rediscover our natural rhythms? What do literature and cinema, past or contemporary, teach u… -
Still of a downpour in the mist / Video by Dorn Hetzel A South African writer born after the Group Areas Act returns to Simon’s Town with her mother, who used to visit the old fishing t… -
Photo by Swapan / Stock.adobe.com When martial law is declared in Korea in winter 2024 by a president seeking to stage an autocoup, the writer is pushed to revisit her teenage yea… -
Photo by Feodor Chistyakov / Unsplash.com A mourner at a funeral reflects on the role of queer elders.Made ordinary and mundane, queer deaths big and small trigger modest seisms wi… -
Illustration by europeana / Unsplash.com Muin Masri grew up in Palestine before immigrating to Italy in 1985. Cross for Sale is a loose collection of stories and memories—somet… -
Photo by Aziz Shihab / Courtesy of the author Naomi Shihab Nye recalls the “precious tender threadbare glory of each day” she experienced as a child who was not in a hurry to grow up.… -
Photo of Sharon Jones / ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo A writer remembers her mother who, had she been an artist, would have been Sharon Jones, and asks: Am I an artist? Which m… -
Photos courtesy of the author “Ruins give us this beautiful idea,” writes the author, “that you could make something, something wonderful and strange, as pleasing as you could, imbuing it… -
Photo courtesy of Ksenia Emelianchik / Unsplash Franco’s legacy falls across a celebration of two friends’ birthdays but fails to stifle the hard-earned, uncontainable, savored joy.… -
Photos by Daniel Lincoln and Debby Hudson / Unsplash The Georgian Sketchbook is both a poet’s diary and a chronicle of a Russian war exile in Georgia. Irina Lewinsky, an executive member o… -
Looking for relief and new possibilities, a lecturer at the University of Ibadan travels to Cape Town, but the route is anything but direct. By 1999 the massive exodus out of Nigeria had attained a c… -
Earlier today, as our car was on queue along the Saudi–Bahrain causeway, he turned down the stereo volume for a moment. “What will happen to this Filipini?” The Mary Jane Veloso trial was broadcaste… -
Cairo Al-Rifa'i Mosque | Photo by Mohammed Moussa | CC BY-SA 3.0 An Iranian woman living in the US seeks to understand the meaning of home on a journey to Egypt to visit the burial place… -
Interior of Arbatskaya subway station in Moscow, Russia A woman sweeping the Moscow metro with a twig broom, a violinist playing a Beatles tune, and Chekhov: Philip Metres reflects on his… -
Translator’s note: The following text by Lin Yi-Han, like her novel Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, is based on the theme of what it’s like to dwell in a body that carries traum… -
What Is Lost Can you picture the Argentine pampa? Flat fields, eucalyptus trees, a seemingly inoffensive landscape where a gray sunset might use your boiling blood to paint a path… -
Transfer of Saint Remi relics, stained glass window in the Basilica of Saint Clotilde in Paris, France Named after a medieval French bishop, a transgender poet and essayist reflects on th… -
Photo courtesy of the author. for Juan José Hurtado, in memoriam For the narrator of the following crónica, 16mm films made by Kaqchikel villagers, flying ants, and dragonflies… -
Gloria Blizzard and Jazz, Lake Ontario, Canada | Photo by Heidi Seirekidis This essay takes the form of a jazz standard. Nestled within the intro and outro are alternating A and B section… -
Photo by by Elena Croitoru A countryside flâneuse in search of her deceased grandfather contemplates anchoring, wandering, and the small marks we leave on the world. How does one ge… -
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—… -
“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… -
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…