Crows are more than squawk rockets — they’re highly social creatures who, commute to work, mourn their dead, and show appreciation for kindness.
Krista Stevens
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Secret Life of Urban Crows
On the surprising social arrangements and habits of crows, who recognize and remember individual people and hold funerals to honor their dead — a phenomenon that is helping scientists like Kaeli Swift to understand how intelligent creatures process death. Feed a crow and she will gift you with keys and candy — tokens of her […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Not Really A Distant Aunt: My Family’s Slave
“Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Nyet to Harm Reduction: Russia’s HIV Epidemic
In Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia, one in 50 are HIV positive, half of which are due to intravenous drug use.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Dorothy Allison on How America Devalues Those Who are ‘Other’
Dorothy Allison on how American culture “inherently devalues the poor, the working class, the darks, the queer, the other.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Family’s Slave
Alex Tizon tells the story of his family’s slave, Lola. A utusan (“person who takes commands”), Lola was given as a gift from his grandfather to his mother in 1943, when Lola was 18 years old. Lola worked — unpaid — for Alex and his family for 56 years. In a turbulent childhood where his […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Russia’s Heroin Addicts Are Going Through Hell
Russia’s aversion to harm reduction as a strategy to combat drug addiction has led to an HIV epidemic. In Yekaterinburg — the fourth largest city in Russia with a population of 1.5 million people — one in 50 are HIV positive. In Russia, addiction is considered a “moral sickness” and methadone is illegal — “a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Dorothy Allison on Why Working-Class Literature Is the Strongest
An interview with Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard out of Carolina, on growing up poor, finding her voice, the limitations of fiction, overcoming the stigma of poverty, and being a lesbian in Donald Trump’s America.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Doctor Dolittle of the Upper West Side
Bowel-obstructed bunnies, lame ducks, and festering iguanas at Manhattan’s only exotic animal vet.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes, Writing
At McSorley’s: Unsorted Regulars, Misfits, Liars, Heroes, and Psychos
Rafe Bartholomew discovers his father’s voice in the very place he thought was holding him back, McSorley’s Old Ale House