So let’s talk about your realization, or your narrative persona’s realization, through the course of the book, that the rules do apply. They do apply, although— Well only one: nature, mortality, age, the body. There is that: nobody gets out alive. Like, that. Part of that is your fertility: your fertility will expire, particularly if […]
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Posted inFiction, Story
The Wolves
A forester’s daughter spends a night in a cabin in Soviet Russia, but it takes decades to discover how much danger she put her family in.
Posted inBooks, Story
Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children
Distraught over a sick or disabled child, parents would torture — sometimes even kill — what they believed to be a malevolent stand-in for a stolen baby.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction
How Much is Too Much to Save a Dying Cat?
A series of losses prompts s.e. smith to wonder why, if it’s inevitable, we tend to view death as failure.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
In Foreign Territory, Wondering: Who is the Alpha Monkey?
Leigh Shulman learns the meaning of home and belonging when she volunteers at a monkey refuge with her nine-year-old daughter.
Posted inBooks, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Chasing the Harvest: ‘If You Want to Die, Stay at the Ranch’
In this oral history, a former sheepherder describes the loneliness and medical hardship he experienced while tending sheep in California’s Central Valley.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes, Science & Nature
Civilization Was Supposed to Make Our Lives Better, Right?
Cultivating crops led to permanent settlements, but also greed and exploitation. Was it all worth it?
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
A Girl’s Guide to Missiles
A professor returns to the California military base where she grew up to make sense of her family’s role developing weapons for the US government.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
A Certain Kind of Mammal
Meaghan O’Connell on the joy, the triumph, and the prison of breastfeeding.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Boredom Yields Treasure: The Hermit Who Inadvertently Shaped Climate-Change Science
Billy Barr moved into a remote part of the Rocky Mountains in search of solitude over 40 years ago. To avoid boredom, he documented snow levels, animal sightings, and the date flowers first bloomed. “…collectively his work has become some of the most significant indication that climate change is rearranging mountain ecosystems more dramatically and quickly than anyone imagined.”
