Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Like many of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s nature reserves, the massive  Mangrove Marine Park has world class habitat and little funding to protect it. Deforestation for charcoal and poaching threatens the landscape, but regulations eliminate villagers’ ways of life. How does a tiny staff patrol such a huge landscape and protect its people?

 

Published: May 25, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,354 words)

El Lobo Returns Home

Wolves are one of the most divisive, endangered species in America, conjuring images of savagery and predation, majesty and beauty depending on who you ask. With strong resistance to wolf reintroduction in the Southwest, one reporter follows a group of Mexican gray wolves from their captive birth in a Washington state sanctuary to their release in New Mexico, to see how they fare and understand all that’s stacked against them.

Published: Apr 25, 2017
Length: 27 minutes (6,950 words)

Dalvin Cook and the Stories Behind the Red Flags

Dalvin Cook, a 21-year old running back from Florida State, should juke and stiff-arm his way into the promised land these next four days, joining the likes of Devonta Freeman, Chris Thompson, and Greg Jones (among other Seminoles) to be selected in the NFAL draft. So why are so many people trying to sabotage Cook’s dream?

Published: Apr 25, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,019 words)

Good Luck, Morons: Lazarus Lake and His Impossible Race

The Barkley Marathons are famous among extreme athletes. The story of the race is great. The story of the man behind it is even better.

Author: Sara Estes
Published: Dec 27, 2016
Length: 25 minutes (6,366 words)

Say What You Meme, Meme What You Say

“Memes born of the black diaspora and intended for black audiences — truly, for us and by us — personify a language composed of tongues unburdened by whiteness.”

Source: Fader
Published: Apr 27, 2017
Length: 5 minutes (1,499 words)

How Rich Hippies and Developers Went to War over Instagram’s Favorite Beach

Tulum was once a sleepy Mexican town where Mayan ruins overlooked white-sand beaches. But in the last decade, developers, hippies, and the social media set took advantaged of affordable real estate to transform Tulum into a destination for lifestyle tourists. But last summer, the price for that affordable real estate became clear as the government began to evict longtime residents and business owners..

Source: The Guardian
Published: Apr 26, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,500 words)

How I lost my mother, found my family, recovered my identity

Betty Ann Adam was three years old when she was taken from her mother in what is known as the “’60s Scoop,” a period spanning 30 years in which Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their homes to be placed with white families as church-run residential schools were closing. “The government’s stated intention with the residential schools was to ‘remove the Indian from the child,’ by removing them from their parents and having them educated by white Christians.” By extension, the ’60s Scoop was another horrific, government-endorsed attempt at cultural genocide.

Published: Apr 26, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,753 words)

The Struggles of Writing About Chinese Food as a Chinese Person

Writing about Chinese food lacks cultural context — in part because so few Chinese writers are given the opportunity to publish their stories.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Apr 24, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,595 words)

Snow, Death and Politics

While snowed in on the West Coast, Frances Badalamenti grapples alone with her father’s death on the other side of what feels like a dying country.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 27, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,741 words)

Departing U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera Looks Forward to Next Bend in ‘The Road’

Juan Felipe Herrera, the self-described “poet of the people,” reflects on his two-year term as America’s Poet Laureate. The son of migrant farm workers from California’s rural interior, Herrera is the second Fresno poet appointed to the position, after Philip Levine. What’s with Fresno? Herrera calls Fresno the poetry capital of the world. That’s what.

Source: Fresno Bee
Published: Apr 26, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,222 words)