Essay

The Water Defenders

By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh April 5, 2021

In 2009, an environmental activist was murdered in El Salvador. What happened next challenges conventional wisdom about activism, "the poor," and where real power really lies.

Americas

Essay

Men I Hate: The Stasi Men

By Lynette D'Amico March 2, 2021

On masculinity and making sense of history.

GenderHistory

Essay

Chaos Theory

By Courtney Zoffness March 1, 2021

The astrologist’s question has nothing to do with star-crossed lovers. Rather, she tells me, the positioning of the planets suggests a terror within me.

Family & Relationships

Essay

Mourn and Organize

By Olivia Schwob February 25, 2021

Faced with so much loss, we need space not simply for coping, but for mobilizing against the forces that allow such losses to happen.

Memory Loss HealthPolitics

Essay

Mother Tongue

By Olajide A. Omojarabi February 24, 2021

On which stories are whose to tell.

Family & Relationships

Essay

Girls on the Playground

By Ruth Madievsky February 18, 2021

We thought keeping secrets made us powerful. That’s when the handyman found us.

Family & RelationshipsGender

Essay

Harvesting My Father’s Mementos

By Victor Ehikhamenor February 9, 2021

Officially, B.A. Ehikhamenor was an uneducated farmer. Privately, he was a devoted scribe, a relentless keeper of records and photographs that preserve intimate memories of Nigeria’s tumultuous post-colonial transition.

AfricaFamily & Relationships

Essay

Lost for Words

By Stewart L. Sinclair January 15, 2021

It’s impossible to agree to disagree with someone when there is no mutually agreed upon reality.

PoliticsUSA

Essay

In the Land of Fiction and Fake News

By Elizabeth Mitchell January 15, 2021

A lie is a fiction made up to take away someone else’s power.

Lit WorldPolitics

Essay

Jason the Heat Guy

By Lulu Miller January 11, 2021

The heat guy considers what to do with us, the frozen lesbians on the little dead-end street. If God cut off our heat, who is he to intervene?

Family & RelationshipsGenderPolitics

Essay

The Grief Artist

By Traci Brimhall January 6, 2021

In the wake of a loss comes the urge to create.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

St. Scholastica

By Keside Anosike December 14, 2020

Inside these sounds, she’d said, people’s lives either became richer than what they usually were, like fruits ripened by good weather, or fell flat, like dry leaves.

Clothes, Interrupted Arts & CultureFamily & Relationships

Essay

Like Clockwork

By Caroline Evans December 14, 2020

In the early 20th century, the standardization of international time transformed fashion and commerce.

Clothes, Interrupted History

Essay

How Enslaved People Helped Shape Fashion History

By Jonathan Michael Square December 14, 2020

Their unpaid labor created countless garments, but they were also trendsetters on their own terms.

Clothes, Interrupted

Essay

Dressed Up

By Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo December 14, 2020

For my father, fashion has always been as much about seeking as about finding.

Clothes, Interrupted Family & Relationships

Essay

How Rick Owens Taught Me to Wear Love

By Elfie Tromp December 14, 2020

Even my insurance plan doesn't feel as good as these clothes.

Clothes, Interrupted Arts & CultureLabor

Essay

Next!

By Barclay Bram December 14, 2020

A former model wonders what made him wait in one casting line after another, even when he knew he wasn’t going to get the job.

Clothes, Interrupted Arts & CultureLabor

Essay

Mind the Gap

By Emma Rault December 9, 2020

I am younger, and she is older—but love turns us into time travelers.

Family & RelationshipsGender

Essay

Community and Show-Tunes in Crisis

By Mikaela Dery December 8, 2020

A West Village basement bar with a cult following, an ambling past, and an unwritten future.

Arts & Culture

Essay

Year of the Rat

By Simona Blat November 24, 2020

The rat marks this year as the beginning of some kind of new cycle, though what will be new, and whether or not it will be good, is unknowable.

Bodies & Nature

Essay

Lost in a (Mis)Gendered Appalachia

By Leah Hampton November 23, 2020

For centuries, national mythology has emphasized rural America’s supposed masculinity. It has caused incalculable damage.

USA

Essay

On the Road

By Meg Bernhard November 16, 2020

I loaded up on hand sanitizer and masks, and sketched out a route that would take me to places I’d never seen before.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

For Crying Out Loud

By Renee Simms November 10, 2020

Both personal and political, wailing disrupts the social order.

Family & RelationshipsRace

Essay

If They’re Losing, Who’s Winning?

By G'Ra Asim November 4, 2020

I have gotten older and bigger and certainly no less Black in the years since I first heard Chris Rock’s diagnosis of this problem.

PoliticsRace

ArtEssay

Shedding Light

By Pamela Petro November 2, 2020

Darkness obscures and sunlight reveals, but dusk—that liminal moment in between—murmurs suggestions.

Arts & CultureClimate & Environment

Essay

Buried Deep

By Julia Cooke October 28, 2020

As we muddle through the unknown, the urge to tell secrets has only grown.

Arts & CultureFamily & Relationships

Essay

In Ruins

By Emily Wortman-Wunder October 21, 2020

Eager to commune with the past, a young archaeologist confronts the darker side of the field—and her own disillusionment.

HistoryUSA

Essay

Mixed Blessings

By Michele Moses October 20, 2020

Harvesting wheat in California's warming climate, a writer considers what’s sacred.

Climate & EnvironmentReligion

Essay

Vanessa

By Stephanie Cuepo Wobby October 15, 2020

Vanessa Guillén’s murder was a stark reminder of the dangers facing women in the Army.

GenderJustice

Essay

Named After the Animal

By Sarah Panlibuton Barnes October 13, 2020

My beloved gave me language instead of seed. I let it grow in the places where my loss emptied me out.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

The Hole in the Fence

By Adrian Van Young October 6, 2020

A child’s unlikely friendship with an unseen neighbor transforms in isolation.

Family & Relationships

Essay

For a Good Time, Call

By Natalie Lima September 30, 2020

On the party line, Maria and I can be anything, or anyone. But always, we’re adults.

Family & Relationships

Essay

You Have to Suffer

By Vanessa A. Bee September 23, 2020

I grew up coveting white skin. It would take a village's worth of role models to fix me.

Family & RelationshipsRace

Essay

Certification of Righteousness

By Caitlin Myer September 14, 2020

Taking her cue from biblical assassins, a young Mormon woman struggles to break free.

Family & RelationshipsReligion

Essay

Elsie Conick: A Biography in Fragments

By A-J Aronstein September 8, 2020

In 1918, she became the first Black woman tennis player to appear on the cover of an American magazine.

HistoryRaceSports

Essay

Fever in the Woods

By Hillery Stone August 26, 2020

Tucked far away with my children, this is where I feel safest and most afraid.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

Fitness: How the Climate Killed My Children

By Joseph Osmundson August 20, 2020

If we won’t change to save ourselves, what hope is there for our children?

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Essay

At the Drive-In

By Lacy Warner August 18, 2020

Shame, nostalgia, and watching Get Out in a pandemic.

Arts & CultureRace

Essay

Movie Scores and the Pleasures of Replay

By Maggie Lange August 12, 2020

Now's a very good time to go deep with a movie score—in a crowded content space, they can offer a refreshingly elliptical experience.

Arts & Culture

Essay

The Poetry of Female Fighters

By Meena Kandasamy July 28, 2020

The work of five poet-warriors embodies poetry as op-ed, poetry as resistance, poetry as a call to arms, and poetry as a call to poetry.

Female Fighters

Essay

Up Against the Wall

By Melanie Ritzenthaler July 28, 2020

Physical, personal, or political—our divides are riddled with cracks.

ConflictFamily & Relationships

Essay

Sirens

By Christopher B. Derrick July 27, 2020

Four decades of harassment at the hands of the police.

JusticeRace

Essay

Alone in the Wilderness, Again and Again

By Amy Marsh July 22, 2020

Dick Proenneke has achieved something mythical: he seems happy.

Bodies & NatureClimate & Environment

Essay

Between the Lines

By Nilo Tabrizy July 16, 2020

Seeking solace in the work of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez.

Arts & CultureConflict

Essay

The Bloody Unicorn

By Amanda Parrish Morgan June 30, 2020

Reading frightening stories with my children in turbulent times.

Arts & CultureFamily & Relationships

Essay

The Art of Stillness

By Ayden LeRoux June 25, 2020

The first time I saw a mammogram of mine, I was stunned by the beauty of the image—just as I had been enthralled by sketches of my own body.

Arts & CultureHealth

Essay

Growing Up Sansei in LA

By Karen Tei Yamashita June 23, 2020

As we moved through different neighborhoods, my family stayed in a Japanese American bubble.

Family & Relationships

Essay

The Loneliest City

By Rosa Boshier June 18, 2020

Laura Aguilar’s Southern California photography reveals the intimacy and the isolation that have always been part of the fabric of Los Angeles.

Arts & CultureBodies & NatureUSA

Essay

The Season of Children

By Emilio Carrero June 11, 2020

After a series of hurricanes ravages one Central Florida neighborhood, three kids consider home, change, and the efficacy of destruction.

Climate & EnvironmentRaceUSA

Essay

The Problem of White Efficacy

By R.A. Frumkin June 4, 2020

Striving for goodness is antithetical to reckoning with whiteness.

JusticeRace

Essay

Betsy, Tacy, Sejal, Tib

By Sejal Shah May 22, 2020

Remembering an American girlhood.

Family & Relationships

Essay

The New Troy

By Jesse Lee Kercheval May 11, 2020

Reflections on closing borders, and the propensity of the world to change.

AmericasHealthTravel & Adventure

Essay

Becoming Animal

By Kimi Eisele May 6, 2020

All of us touching our faces, touching habitats, dislodging species.

Bodies & NatureHealth

Essay

The Pandemic Novelist Has Regrets

By Thea Lim April 26, 2020

In books and movies we've imagined it would take a gruesome virus to push working people to the edge. In reality, late capitalism is enough.

Bodies & NatureHealth

Essay

Astrophotography and the Zeitgeist

By Alessandro Tersigni April 22, 2020

Photos of Earth taken from space can teach us about how we think—about our home planet, and its place in the universe.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Ordinary Insanity

By Sarah Menkedick April 7, 2020

America’s fetishization of reproductive risk is driving mothers mad.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

Notes from a Hypochondriac

By Matthew Lansburgh April 2, 2020

The age of COVID-19 has a way of heightening our anxieties, though that doesn't mean they're new.

Health

Essay

A Country on the Cusp of Change

By Tara Cheesman March 31, 2020

Hwang Sok-yong's fictions delve into Korean class dynamics.

Asia & Oceania

Essay

The Optimist’s Apocalypse

By R.A. Frumkin March 30, 2020

What if the world can “end,” as your life has many times—and then begin again?

Climate & EnvironmentHealthPolitics

Essay

Medusa and the Invention of Spells

By Kathryn Nuernberger March 25, 2020

A spell is most effective when you want something and can remember a time it already existed.

Arts & CultureBodies & Nature

Essay

From Environmental Crisis to Pandemic, Waging a War with Nature

By John Kaag March 17, 2020

What the 19th century American pragmatist William James can teach us in the age of coronavirus.

Climate & EnvironmentPolitics

Essay

The Terrarium

By Brice Particelli March 5, 2020

The flat earth community has been on a fast, upward climb.

Bodies & NaturePolitics

Essay

Beasts of the Fields

By Aimée Baker February 19, 2020

Family heartache on the northern New York border, and the creatures that bore witness to it.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

Can’t Win

By Andres Begue February 3, 2020

Loyalty, loss, and local fandom, from New Orleans to New York City.

Sports

Essay

World Without End

By Martha Park January 20, 2020

Lately, I’ve found the language of apocalypse creeping up in my own life for the first time, and with increasing frequency.

Climate & EnvironmentReligion

Essay

The Ways We Take Ourselves Apart

By Cameron Dezen Hammon December 17, 2019

While I am texting the man who is not my husband, bacteria is growing inside the bodies of my daughter and her best friend.

Family & Relationships

Essay

I and Thou: A Bigfoot Encounter

By Renée Branum December 16, 2019

It’s possible, even likely, that somehow all of us, even those among us who pay close attention, have missed something.

Religion

Essay

What the Doctor Ordered

By Margaret Wardlaw December 9, 2019

Caring for a dying patient, a pediatrician wrestles with questions of suffering and salvation.

Bodies & NatureHealth

Essay

Coming into Bloom

By DJ Cashmere November 26, 2019

Finding love and making peace with impermanence, with a little help from some sunflowers.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

Artist in Residence

By Lawrence Levi November 19, 2019

What I learned—and didn’t—from living with a jazz legend.

Arts & Culture

Essay

Turning, Unfolding, Passing Through

By Ellen Wayland-Smith November 14, 2019

“Past their prime,” my mother says, shaking her head at pears forgotten on the kitchen counter, turning to rot.

Bodies & NatureFamily & Relationships

Essay

No Country

By Andre Perry November 11, 2019

In an excerpt from his new book of essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, Andre Perry discusses race, identity, moving around the US, and the Midwest.

Family & RelationshipsRaceUSA

Essay

Lust for Science

By Cassie Donish November 1, 2019

What could gender, sex toys, rodents, and climate change possibly have in common?

Family & Relationships

Essay

After the Storm

By Mary Heglar October 22, 2019

How Hurricane Katrina and the murder of Emmett Till shaped one woman’s commitment to climate justice

Climate & Environment

Essay

The Space Between Us

By Emily James October 9, 2019

My daughter was five days old when I realized the love I had for her would fall short.

Family & Relationships

Essay

Why We Cry When We’re Angry

By Marissa Korbel October 8, 2019

I feel like an electric line, snapped from the pole by the wind. A live wire. I spark against the ground.

Bodies & Nature

Essay

Out of the Maze

By Sandy Allen September 26, 2019

Searching for meaning in madness at London's Bethlem Museum of the Mind.

Arts & CultureFamily & Relationships

Essay

I Am Telling You What Happened To Me

By Susannah Nevison September 18, 2019

I keep coming back to the violence before the violence, the moment of narrative rupture.

Bodies & NatureConflict

Essay

Starshift

By Gabrielle Bellot September 9, 2019

In an era of climate change, everything feels strange. Even the places we call home.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Everything We Do Not Know

By Aaron Gilbreath September 4, 2019

Environmental and personal fallout from the Fukushima disaster continues nearly a decade later.

Climate & Environment

Essay

Anthems for the Anthropocene

By Mario Reinaldo Machado August 26, 2019

Eco-hardcore music, with its aggressive lyrics and antisocial performances, upended stereotypes of hippie environmentalists—today those visceral live performances match the sense of panic around environmental concerns.

Climate & Environment

EssayLives

Jasmine Fingers

By Lubna Safi August 22, 2019

How does the poem keep us there? in memory? in the traces? keep us coming back?

Arts & CultureConflict

Essay

Bint el-Balad

By Nour Malas August 6, 2019

A journalist reflects on the difficulty of maintaining professional boundaries while covering the Syrian refugee crisis

ConflictMENAPolitics

Essay

Kidnapped, Tortured, and Navigating an Indifferent Court System

By Jen Ross July 31, 2019

After narrowly escaping a violent abduction, Linda Loaiza López has become an activist against gender-based violence.

Justice

Essay

Small Problem

By Helen Benedict July 23, 2019

An encounter with refugees and the legal system of Greece

EuropeGovernmentJustice

Essay

Before the Shaking Starts

By Trevor Quirk July 10, 2019

Living in the shadow of Utah’s next big earthquake.

Climate & Environment

Essay

An Infrastructure of Innocence

By DJ Cashmere June 25, 2019

On a trip to Alabama, reckoning with monuments, myths, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Arts & CultureRace

Essay

How I Wrote Certain of My (Fake) Poems

By Lucy Ives June 14, 2019

The author of Loudermilk reflects on “the weirdest form of history writing” she's ever done.

Lit World

Essay

Bead, Bed, and Alley

By T Fleischmann May 30, 2019

On a trip to Berlin, the spin of the moon, and the generosity of the artist

Family & Relationships

Essay

Nugrybauti

By Joel Mowdy April 24, 2019

In Lithuania, going astray while picking mushrooms is a common experience, with its own word. The same word is used to describe veering from the plot of a story—like my father did when he talked about his time in Vietnam.

Family & Relationships

EssayLives

Dancing Alvin Ailey’s Revelations in Black and Brown

By Jamila Wilkinson March 15, 2019

How can I perform a story that isn’t mine to tell?

Arts & CultureRace

EssayLives

An Apex of Babble

By John Sperry March 6, 2019

I grew up in a community where the phenomenon of speaking in tongues (called glossolalia by linguists) is more than just some loaves-and-fishes Sunday School curiosity.

Religion

Essay

What Remains

By Jacqueline Alnes February 21, 2019

How can I write a history of myself without remembering? And why am I compelled to?

AmericasBodies & Nature

Essay

Death of a Dream

By Michelle García February 19, 2019

As demographics shift, Latinos in Texas are claiming the majority and seeing themselves in the center of the national story.

Rewriting the West AmericasHistoryPolitics

Essay

New Series: Rewriting the West

By Adriana Gallardo, Michelle García, Fernanda Santos, Raúl Ramos, and Carolina A. Miranda February 19, 2019

Reconsidering the origin stories and mythologies of Los Angeles, Texas, Arizona, the Alamo, and a family.

Rewriting the West

Essay

The Alamo is a Rupture

By Raúl Ramos February 19, 2019

It’s time to reckon with the true history of the mythologized Texas landmark—and the racism and imperialism it represents.

Rewriting the West AmericasGovernmentHistoryPolitics

Essay

Remapping LA

By Carolina A. Miranda February 19, 2019

Before California was West, it was North and it was East: the uppermost periphery of the Mexican Empire, and the arrival point for Chinese immigrants making the perilous journey from Guangdong.

Rewriting the West AmericasHistoryRace

Essay

“The Best Kind of People”: Shifting Definitions of Citizenship and the Making of Arizona

By Fernanda Santos February 19, 2019

For a century, Anglos from cold corners of the country have been lured here by the promise that this was a place where they could live among their own, in communities with nary a brown person in sight.

Rewriting the West AmericasHistoryPolitics

Essay

The Lucky Ones

By Adriana Gallardo February 19, 2019

I told her we were brought over the Rio Grande on a raft. I never called it a smuggling.

Rewriting the West AmericasFamily & RelationshipsPolitics

Essay

White Witchery

By Elissa Washuta February 14, 2019

I just want a version of the occult that isn’t built on plunder, but I suspect that if we could excise the stolen pieces, there would be nothing left.

Bodies & Nature