EssayThe Cutting Room

Arrivals and Departures

By Grace Loh Prasad March 4, 2024

“The year I found my own independence was the year they finally gained the right to go — and to stay — home.”

The Cutting Room

The Glove

By Laura McNeal March 4, 2024

from Laura McNeal’s new novel, The Swan's Nest

FictionThe Cutting Room

“The Last Time I Came to Burn Paper”

By Aube Rey Lescure January 16, 2024

From Aube Rey Lescure’s debut novel, River East, River West

EssayThe Cutting Room

Allegiance

By Susan Kiyo Ito November 6, 2023

They couldn’t call me a Jap when I was wearing a Girl Scout uniform. It was too American. It was like a shield.

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Strangers in India

By Thrity Umrigar October 2, 2023

Here he was, getting ahead of himself as usual. Mummy looked as if she could slip away tonight.

EssayThe Cutting Room

What Should Men Do with Their Hands?

By Hannah Carlson September 5, 2023

Hannah Carlson's Pockets asks the tough questions.

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Solidarność

By Jehanne Dubrow September 5, 2023

On design for revolution

Europe

FictionThe Cutting Room

Go More on Each Gallon

By Ben Purkert August 7, 2023

From Ben Purkert's The Men Can't Be Saved

Work & Money

EssayThe Cutting Room

The Paradox

By Prachi Gupta August 7, 2023

The British Empire used mental health to assert white supremacy in its colonies. But we still needed a diagnosis.

Health

EssayThe Cutting Room

After the Murder

By Donovan X. Ramsey July 6, 2023

When the wave of hope finally broke for Black America

Race

EssayThe Cutting Room

Always Someone Leaving

By Beth Nguyen July 6, 2023

An outtake from Beth Nguyen's new memoir

FictionThe Cutting Room

Hauntings

By Rachel Eliza Griffiths July 5, 2023

How impossible, how suspicious, it feels to join myself, my girlhood, to the ways of white people who would prefer me and my family dead.

FictionThe Cutting Room

Draw Me

By Ruth Madievsky July 5, 2023

I was translucent. I was a rhinestone reflecting the moon in a parking lot.

Family & Relationships

EssayThe Cutting Room

A Little Love

By Anjan Sundaram April 5, 2023

What you lose in wartime, even to a war that is not yours

Conflict

PoetryThe Cutting Room

A Girl Can Dream — 

By Vandana Khanna April 5, 2023

Unpublished poems from a new collection reimagining Hindu goddesses through a feminist lens

EssayThe Cutting Room

Hospital Journal

By Kathryn Savage December 13, 2022

Words try to blot death up, but death leaks faster than language can soak.

Bodies & Nature

FictionThe Cutting Room

On Waking in a Stranger’s Room

By Danny Ramadan November 22, 2022

I look up one last time, and my father’s face appears at the top of the stairs.

EssayThe Cutting Room

Raw Material

By Sorayya Khan November 7, 2022

I skate through time a little longer, backward and forward, backward and forward.

Family & Relationships

PhotographyThe Cutting Room

Alan Chin’s Infinity Goes Up on Trial

Photographs by Alan Chin September 27, 2022

A meditation on answering the question, “How do you photograph a microbe?”

USA

FictionThe Cutting Room

The Pearl Pavilion

By Vanessa Hua May 10, 2022

Shrimp Boy emerges from beneath his table, locks eyes with me, and flees.

Arts & Culture

EssayThe Cutting Room

The Peanut King

By Jori Lewis April 19, 2022

Beneath the economic empire of the richest man in Africa lies the lowly peanut.

Africa

FictionThe Cutting Room

Interlude

By Elaine Hsieh Chou March 28, 2022

His cruelty was an afterthought, something clipped carelessly on his belt.

EssayThe Cutting Room

“Who Is Who and What Is What”

By Chris Lockhart and Daniel Mulilo Chama March 17, 2022

An intimate portrait of Zambian street children

Africa

EssayThe Cutting Room

Good Questions Are a Kind of Salvation

By Cole Arthur Riley February 22, 2022

On learning how to listen for deep story

Family & RelationshipsRace