Category: Nonfiction

Music as original as Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s sounds evergreen, but originality came with a high personal cost for its maker.

Faylita Hicks considers what it means to be a Black nonbinary activist in the age of Trump — and questions how the social justice movement has changed the way they have sex.

Essaying on the way white supremacy shapes life.

“It’s strange to think that the Righteous Brothers outlive my mother. Sometimes I pretend they are singing to her.”

This week, we’re sharing stories from Jessica Lustig, Ed Yong, Leslie Jamison, Rosa Lyster, and Geoff Edgers.

In the midst of a pandemic, nature reminds Susan Krawitz that miracles are possible.

June Amelia Rose remembers coming out in her youth to a turbulent family as her mother died of cancer.

As she’s done before, Sara B. Franklin greets the specter of death by defiantly planting a life-sustaining vegetable garden.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Amanda Hess, Robert Draper, Emily Gogolak, Mark O’Connell, and Gabrielle Bellot.

For wealthy Americans, a dystopian future includes underground golfing in South Dakota.

Our stories matter. And they are our legacies for future generations. (Plus: some free writing resources.)

Naz Riahi recalls her vibrant childhood in a suburb of Tehran, and considers how the harsh realities imposed by the still new Islamic Republic seeped into her family’s life.

Rules can ruin the kind of exciting language that makes literature rewarding, but some rules also enhance writing. It’s challenging to find the middle ground.

Lawrence Wright did it again; Jordan Peterson in a coma?; Myriam Gurba forced out of her job; Woody Allen canceled by his publisher’s employees; THE VIRUS; and more.

For one poet, conducting a satisfying literary life off-page required living life outside the classroom.

Sarah Fay reflects on four years spent in solitude (and isolation [and loneliness]), viewing it through the lens of punctuation.

One Republican offers a ray of light during these dark times: That this pandemic will end the Trump presidency.

A headline-grabbing murder-for-hire plot helped expose the dark side of exotic animal ownership in the U.S. Is there now enough momentum to reform the industry?

This week, we’re sharing stories from Rebecca Solnit, Aaron Gordon, Jason Daley, Maria T. Allocco, and David Marchese.

Exotic critters have gnawed the frail threads that once bound a small Ontario community.

“I’m going to say a blasphemous thing, which is we are so fucking done with the hero’s journey. It has been to our peril.”

Dialogue, Twitter-style: you get called out on social media. People pile on to you. Other people pile on to the pile-oners. Soon everyone’s anxious or angry or both, no one’s really talking (or listening), and a few tech CEOs are buying new houses in Jackson Hole.

By bringing new dimensions to an unjust process, a well-told story has the power to impact some of our most flawed systems.

Sarah Miller thinks about climate change and other current horrors, and what it’s like just being sad forever.

“As medicine advances, we have more survivors. But those survivors carry trauma to their graves.”

New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.

Every era bears its aesthetic burden. This is ours.

Even as California’s Inland Empire loses its citrus industry to urbanization, urbanites can still keep social ties by planting fruit trees in their yards.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Malcolm Harris, Tom Lamont, Melissa Jeltsen, Moe Tkacik, and Lavinia Spalding.

Moe Tkacik reveals the web of shadiness lurking behind WeWork’s facade.