‘If an Animal Talks, I’m Sold’: An Interview with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer By Alan Scherstuhl Feature Ann and Jeff Vandermeer discuss talking animals, the weird/fantasy divide, and the ‘rate of fey’ as an organizing principle in their new anthology of classic fantasy.
Why Bugs Deserve Our Respect By Jessica Gross Feature Fruit flies helped us win six Nobel prizes in medicine. Architects have been inspired by termite hills. Ecologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains why bugs are so essential to the world we live in.
A Manson Murder Investigation 20 Years In the Making: ‘There Are Still Secrets’ By Zan Romanoff Feature ‘Everything that Manson did with his women was exactly what the CIA was trying to do with people without their knowledge, in the exact same time, at the exact same place.’
‘TV Has This Really Fraught Relationship with the Audience.’ By Jonny Auping Feature Emily Nussbaum talks about why TV’s relationship with its audience has become more intimate, whether we can blame Trump on True Detective, and how a TV critic’s biggest challenge is just figuring out what to watch.
Those Limits Were Not Hindrances: An Interview with Megan Pugh By Aaron Gilbreath Feature How a writer worked hard to understand one of American music’s most mysterious performers while protecting his past, and art.
‘Nothing Kept Me Up At Night the Way the Gorgon Stare Did.’ By Sam Jaffe Goldstein Feature The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology that can track multiple moving targets at once, is coming to a city near you.
‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
‘They Happen To Be Our Neighbors Across the Span of a Century, But They’re Our Neighbors.’ By Adam Morgan Feature One hundred summers ago, black Chicagoans were terrorized by whites during the Red Summer. Poet Eve Ewing talks about reaching out to her neighbors across time in “1919.”
‘If Any of My Old Friends Are Reading This, It Is Okay Out Here.’ By Jacqueline Alnes Feature Amber Scorah talks about committing the one unforgiveable sin: believing, then not believing.
Remembering Roky Erickson By Tom Maxwell Feature Despite ongoing personal struggle, the psychedelic rock pioneer left a singular body of work that continues to influence musicians and challenge listeners.
Kristen Arnett on Taxidermy, Memory, and “Mostly Dead Things” By Tobias Carroll Feature “What’s considered high art? What’s lowbrow? What are those things? That’s something that, as a person who like, lives at 7-Eleven, I’m extremely interested in.”
Reimagining Harper Lee’s Lost True Crime Novel: An Interview with Casey Cep By Adam Morgan Feature “Somewhere along the way it became very clear to me that I was writing the book she never would.”
‘The Home Is a Place as Wild as Any in the World.’ By Alex Madison Feature Chia-Chia Lin talks about the wildness of domestic spaces and writing her novel “The Unpassing” through the early months of motherhood.
The Growing Power of Prosecutors By Hope Reese Feature An unintended consequence of mandatory minimums has been to concentrate too much power in the hands of prosecutors. Journalist Emily Bazelon talks about how some cities are pushing back.
Keeping the Focus on the People: An Interview with Joe Kloc By Aaron Gilbreath Feature It took eight years to write the story of Richardson Bay’s boat community, known as the anchor-outs.
‘Midwesterners Have Seen Themselves As Being in the Center of Everything.’ By Bridey Heing Feature In “The Heartland,” Kristin L. Hoganson says America’s Midwest has been more connected to global events than popular history allows — especially popular history as told in the Midwest.
United States of Conspiracy: An Interview with Anna Merlan By Rebecca McCarthy Feature “Most people in America believe in one conspiracy to some extent, but the far end of the pool … is this desire to show that you really do reject all knowable authority.”
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’ By Amy Brady Feature Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
If Following McMillan Cottom and Gay on Twitter Isn’t Enough, Here You Go By Michelle Weber Highlight More of this sort of thing, thanks.
‘I’m Always Writing Against This Idea That Denver’s a White Space.’ By Adam Morgan Feature Kali Fajardo-Anstine talks about her new short story collection “Sabrina & Corina,” her obsession with dualities, and Chicano and Indigenous history in Denver.
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium By Michelle Weber Highlight Let’s grab a waffle and challenge the global hegemony of U.S. culture.
‘There’s Virtually No Conversation In Chicago … About the Aftershocks of the Violence.’ By Hope Reese Feature In “An American Summer,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz tries to report on gun deaths on Chicago’s South Side with the same attention to survivors, anniversaries, and aftershocks that is paid to mass shootings.
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel By Tobias Carroll Feature “I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
‘Imagine Us, Because We’re Here’: An Interview with Mira Jacob By Naomi Elias Feature Mira Jacob talks about why she wrote a graphic memoir, and why she is tired of performing her pain in order to help white people understand racism.
Irvine Welsh on Brexit, Existential Panic, and His Latest ‘Trainspotting’ Sequel By Tobias Carroll Feature “The books from ‘Trainspotting’ onwards have been about deindustrialization … the cruel existential panic that we feel, in the sense that we don’t really know what we’re here for anymore.”
‘Women Can Be Required To Wear Something That’s Painful.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Summer Brennan talks about femininity and suffering, beauty and biology, and the startlingly dark turn she found herself taking when writing about women and power in her new book ‘High Heel.’
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