Can Kevin Young Make Poetry Matter Again?

For Esquire, Robert P. Baird talks to Kevin Young, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the recently appointed poetry editor at the New Yorker about the future of poetry.

Source: Esquire
Published: Nov 6, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,768 words)

Everyone Should Fear What Happened to the Gothamist Sites

Former LAist editor-in-chief Julia Wick writes on the power of local journalism — and the dangers it’s currently facing.

Author: Julia Wick
Source: CityLab
Published: Nov 6, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,540 words)

Are We Having Fun Yet?

The Museum of Ice Cream is popular, colorful, and sugary, but are visitors playing—or playing themselves?

Source: Curbed
Published: Oct 31, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,975 words)

Cast by Chronic Illness Into a Limiting Role

A personal essay in which Maris Kreizman recalls having her dreams of attending performing arts camp — not to mention her Broadway ambitions — dashed by juvenile diabetes, and illness she refuses to be defined by.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 6, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,462 words)

Necessary Violence

One doctor examines the inherent violence of the medical profession where, as she puts it, surgeons and staff “hurt people in order to help them” by prying open their chest cavities and jamming tubes into veins. In the world outside the hospital, these acts would be considered traumatic and unsettling, so what psychic effect do they have on practitioners and patients? How can practitioners cultivate empathy? And how much medical violence is necessary?

Published: Oct 31, 2017
Length: 31 minutes (7,865 words)

The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English

How classicist Emily Wilson cut through centuries of literary tradition to produce a fresh verse epic.

Published: Nov 2, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,585 words)

When a Mother and Daughter Reverse Roles

A personal essay in which Marlene Adelstein looks a her obsession with an orphaned sea otter and realizes it’s helping her process her grief over her Alzheimers-afflicted mom.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 3, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,061 words)

The Russian Spies Who Fooled Seattle

Before Russian espionage became part of our daily news diet, Russia was already working to infiltrate American politics and life, and few Americans noticed that its undercover agents lived among us.

Source: Seattle Met
Published: Oct 30, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,291 words)

Florida: Why Panic?

No one in Northeast Florida expected damage from Hurricane Irma, but the damage came anyway.

Published: Oct 17, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,735 words)

Promethea Unbound

Promethea Olympia Kyrene Pythaitha renamed herself at age 13, the year she graduated from Montana State University, with the belief that “her life, and its work, would have meaning.” A prodigy who had begun to read at nine months, Promethea grew up in poverty with her mother in Montana. But news of her talents spread throughout the Greek diaspora, bringing into their lives a benefactor who became obsessed with her education.

Source: The Atavist
Published: Oct 31, 2017
Length: 50 minutes (12,600 words)