Shadow City, Invisible City: Walking Through an Ever-Changing Kabul
“Kabul changed years before the Taliban entered the city on August 15th, 2021, and yet in the news and in mainstream narratives, I find it presented as a surprise. Surprise, I find, is another word for wilful forgetting, a different shade of amnesia. A way to talk only of those who were “saved,” rather than those who had no choice but to remain.”
Writing from Home: Lessons from a Novelist-Slash-Small-Town Newspaper Columnist
“Small towns around Wisconsin are depopulating, the main streets emptying and shuttering. An American way of life is disappearing, and with it, an exchange is made. If there is no future for small-towns, what about local media like the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram? Who will report on the illegal acts of multinational corporations polluting the countryside? State officials undermining local and regional democracy? Who will grow the nation’s food? Who will work in its factories? Who will be the stewards of the backroad forests, orchards, prairies, rivers, and streams?”
The Ambiguous Loss of (Probably) Not Selling My Novel
In a period of trying to sell her novel, Danielle Lazarin reflects on art, waiting, and the space between grief and hope.
Misunderstanding Thoreau: Reading Neurodiversity in Literature and in Life
“Steve Edwards on Kathryn Schulz, Donald Hall, and the things we miss.”
Shortcuts to Identity: How We Tell Asian American Stories
“When it comes to bubble tea and Amy Tan, I’ve taken different stances, but the two have much in common. They’ve both become shorthands of some vaguely ‘Asian American thing.'”
Why I Paid Tenfold to Buy Back the Rights for Two of My Books
Kiese Laymon on revision, radical friendship, and community.
Growing Up in the Soviet Union’s Hero City
“I grew up in a microregion of apartment blocks on the south-western edge of the capital city in a provincial Soviet republic that gained its independence around the time when a few girls in my class claimed they got their first periods though it would take me a few more years to get there.”
A Close Reading of Randall Kenan, Who Paid Rare Attention to Black Complexity
“Omari Weekes and Elias Rodriques in conversation about the late writer.”
The Wound of Multilingualism: On Surrendering the Languages of Home
“Learning a language as an adult or in your teens, especially with a history of repeated migrations between languages and countries, is extraordinarily difficult. It isn’t just about swallowing new words like passion fruit that glides down your throat. It’s like chewing on stones breaking your teeth in order to seed the foundations of that new language on your tongue already heavy with many idioms.”
Letter from Exile
“Finding home in a pandemic.”
