Photo of Han Kang by Paik Dahuim / Courtesy of Natur & KulturLike a clutch of words strewn over white paper.
Seoul, which I had last seen in summer, had frozen.
Turning to look behind me, I sa…
ESSAYS
Photo of Kaesong city center, North Korea by Herr Loeffler / Stock.adobe.comWhat literature is available in North Korea? What do North Koreans enjoy reading, and in what format do they read? From Gone…
Digital illustration by Emily Holson, Trapped in Surveillance (2024).Reminding us that “freedom is a muscle,” a writer of children’s and young adult literature whose own Drum Dream Girl has b…
Photo of India’s Independence Day, New Delhi / Alamy.comFollowing the June 2024 elections in India, making Narendra Modi the head of a coalition government, a writer from New Delhi decides to revisit…
The Chernihiv Theater was partially destroyed by a Russian missile strike in August 2023. Photo by Oliver RawDespite Berdichev, Ukraine, being Joseph Conrad’s ancestral home, and despite the fact he i…
Village scene in Santiniketan / Photo by Eric Parker / FlickrIn a country where wanting to remain rural is a choice now only available to the wealthy, what does rural mean? Here, Sumana Roy contemplat…
The Cemetery Mártires del 19 de Julio / WikimediaIn these chronicles of funeral workers in Peru during the Covid-19 pandemic, families gather in a cemetery the size of fifty soccer fields to try to ac…
Photo by Mistervlad / Stock.adobe.comAn Argentine in Stockholm marvels over the Swedish language and Sweden’s culture. The first time I ever heard Swedish spoken was on a visit to Stockholm. I was in…
Photo of the village of Oia by Baret MagarianThough Santorini is a place where the sensory gets top billing, it’s an island of sweeping contrasts. After an extended stay, Baret Magarian explores its h…
Photo by Mathias Reding / Unsplash.comAn American teacher on a Fulbright in Kolkata encounters a surprising flashpoint in a classroom discussion of concrete nouns. In my earnest Ohio accent o…
Photo of Imbros by Yakup Ahmet Baran / Stock.adobe.comThe Turkish island of Imbros represents a historical anomaly of Mediterranean geopolitics. Matt A. Hanson traces the tenacious attempt by the…
Photo of Wole Soyinka by the authorInspired by a photo and the histories connected to it, a writer makes a film to mark Wole Soyinka’s ninetieth year. The photo of a young man of thirty-five, on the f…
Photo of Chihuahuan Desert, Contrabando Area ~ Big Bend Ranch State Park by Gary Nored / flickr.comCan we tell stories, the author asks, “in a way that makes more breathing room, that does not cru…
Photo of monument to Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky by abs0lute / Stock.adobe.comAgainst increasing calls to “cancel” Dostoevsky due to the Russian nationalism espoused in his writing…
Photo of Sandra Day O'Connor by Yousef Khanfar / www.yousefkhanfar.comPhotographer Yousef Khanfar recalls his time with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in this tribute to the first female justice of the U…
Even though the Latin American novel was never the West’s “Other,” the new Handbook published by Oxford University Press does a marvelous job of producing a sorely needed remapping of the continent’s…
Mural in the vicinity of Croke Park, Dublin / Photo by Damjana Mraović-O’HareWhat are the three ancient Irish sports and how have they played a role in Irish history? Find out this and more in Mraović…
When reflecting on the experience of interviewing his own grandfather into his one hundredth year, Matt A. Hanson finds a kindred methodology in writer Michael Frank’s patience as he interviewed Holoc…
Sona Jobarteh, the first woman to achieve an international profile playing the kora, is a singular figure in the pantheon of twenty-first-century African artists. Read Banning Eyre’s profile of her h…
Photo courtesy of authorA refugee from the Bosnian War, Lana Spendl recalls family weekends in the country outside of Sarajevo: her friend with one cow, her grandmother’s garden, butterflies, and her…
Photos by Yousef Khanfar | www.yousefkhanfar.comThe tears, the rituals: a family goes on a journey and joins millions of strangers pouring into Mecca. In this moving essay, a writer evokes the beauty,…
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête (1743)After a decade of talking to strangers while traveling, J. R. Patterson explores why strangers make some of the best conversation…
For the past few years I’ve been living in Lahore. Like they have for many, the brave women-led Iranian protests have made me reflect on the rights of women and the price we pay for freedom and justic…
When Irina Flige visited the University of Oklahoma to receive the 2022 Clyde Snow Social Justice Award earlier this year, she delivered the following public lecture, based on her work with the Russia…
In the mid-1960s Lam’s mother ran an orphanage in Sadec in the Mekong Delta, when his father was stationed there.Remembering his mother, who loved and protected without wavering, writer Andrew Lam als…