“I am not sure I know how to unbraid the language of the apocalypse from all this and still have a voice left to speak to you.”
essay
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Last of the Bougainvillea Years
“A poet from Tripoli was displaced in Dubai for a decade, but suddenly it felt like home as another move, this time across the globe, was imminent.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
There are Trees in the Future, Or, A Case for Staying
“What is a city without its people, its history, its intimate relationships, its land and public spaces? If every place becomes any place, what difference does it make?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Safety Town
Traffic gardens are miniature street systems through which children — and adults — can learn about road safety. Ilana Bean explores these small-scale utopias through the lens of her mother’s work in traffic safety and road design, and also writes about our relationships to transportation and our urban environment. For the most part, we don’t […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Dismantling of Hong Kong
“When I say I miss Hong Kong, what I mean is the city as I remember it between the years of 2014 and 2019.” Karen Cheung reflects on the transformation of her home city. It wasn’t only that we could not see our future a few years down the line — say, whether we could […]
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Joan Didion’s Magic Trick
Caitlin Flanagan goes on a road trip through California — including Sacramento, Berkeley, and Malibu — visiting the homes of the late Joan Didion and exploring why her writing has had such a powerful effect on people. Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album created a new vocabulary of essay writing, one whose influence is […]
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Dislodged
In this beautiful personal essay, Josh McColough recounts a road trip with his daughter along the coast of California and makes poignant observations about humanity and our vulnerable environment. Still, we too often move through life not considering our size and stature relative to forces and objects that humble us. Geologic time. Plate tectonics. A […]
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I’ve Always Struggled With My Weight. Losing It Didn’t Mean Winning.
“A diet app helped me shed my extra Covid pounds — and reminded me that I’m still the same old me.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Rainbow Trout Know About Relationships
Lauren Silverman weaves together issues surrounding relationships, immigration … and rainbow trout. It is a beautifully written, and highly personal, essay. Here’s a fish that is born with multiple destinies. It can choose to stay in its native river forever, or swim hundreds of miles into the deep blue — and it makes this life-altering choice […]