Photo by Great Brut Here / Stock.adobe.com
In his plea for the planet, in which “humans understand themselves as a harmonious part of the Earth, neither more nor less than other animals, plants…
ESSAYS
Photo by Andrew Lam The author’s childhood ended, more or less, on the beach of Vung Tau, Vietnam, “where magic and prayers failed.” In this lyric essay, he returns to the scene as a double ref…
Photo of Han Kang by Paik Dahuim / Courtesy of Natur & Kultur Like a clutch of words strewn over white paper. Seoul, which I had last seen in summer, had frozen. Turning to look behind me,…
Photo of Kaesong city center, North Korea by Herr Loeffler / Stock.adobe.com What literature is available in North Korea? What do North Koreans enjoy reading, and in what format do they read? F…
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…
Photo of India’s Independence Day, New Delhi / Alamy.com Following the June 2024 elections in India, making Narendra Modi the head of a coalition government, a writer from New Delhi decides to rev…
The Chernihiv Theater was partially destroyed by a Russian missile strike in August 2023. Photo by Oliver Raw Despite Berdichev, Ukraine, being Joseph Conrad’s ancestral home, and despite the fact…
Village scene in Santiniketan / Photo by Eric Parker / Flickr In a country where wanting to remain rural is a choice now only available to the wealthy, what does rural mean? Here, Sumana Roy conte…
The Cemetery Mártires del 19 de Julio / Wikimedia In 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…
Photo by Mistervlad / Stock.adobe.com An 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 w…
Photo of the village of Oia by Baret Magarian Though Santorini is a place where the sensory gets top billing, it’s an island of sweeping contrasts. After an extended stay, Baret Magarian explores…
Photo by Mathias Reding / Unsplash.com An American teacher on a Fulbright in Kolkata encounters a surprising flashpoint in a classroom discussion of concrete nouns. In my earnest Ohio ac…
Photo of Imbros by Yakup Ahmet Baran / Stock.adobe.com The Turkish island of Imbros represents a historical anomaly of Mediterranean geopolitics. Matt A. Hanson traces the tenacious attempt by…
Photo of Wole Soyinka by the author Inspired 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…
Photo of Chihuahuan Desert, Contrabando Area ~ Big Bend Ranch State Park by Gary Nored / flickr.com Can we tell stories, the author asks, “in a way that makes more breathing room, that does no…
Photo of monument to Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky by abs0lute / Stock.adobe.com Against increasing calls to “cancel” Dostoevsky due to the Russian nationalism espoused in his wr…
Photo of Sandra Day O'Connor by Yousef Khanfar / www.yousefkhanfar.com Photographer Yousef Khanfar recalls his time with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in this tribute to the first female justice of…
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’Hare What are the three ancient Irish sports and how have they played a role in Irish history? Find out this and more in Mr…
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…
Photo courtesy of author A 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…
Photos by Yousef Khanfar | www.yousefkhanfar.com The 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 be…
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 co…
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…