I nearly decided to begin writing this piece with a list of circumstances: those which led my writing of this piece, those which led to publishing it, and those which led to reading your book in the first place. I quickly realized it would become a l

They say we are sinking, but the sea has spat out the bones of our villages a thousand and one times.

Jaime had hesitated with the birds, afraid to use them in a ritual, afraid of what they might return to him.

My enthusiasm for pockets has never failed to surprise the men who overhear it. They respond as if it is I, not the pocket, who is unusual. A pocket, they seem to think. So pedestrian. A pocket! they seem to think. My good God, the things that get wo

In photography class, you had learned to control your breathing, to narrow your focus and attention and direct it at one external object outside of you.

This month, we parse bodies — or, perhaps more accurately, some considerations of being bodied, of what is read of bodies’ clothes, of what is read from bodies, raw. This being Guernica, the sum of our offering is contradiction. Ellie Eberlee seeks i

In the years that formed me, I poured myself into classes, hobbies, extracurriculars I was told you’d like: Latin, Mandarin, Multivariable Calculus, Swimming, AP Physics.

After the Great Wall of China, the second-longest wall in the world is in the Sahara. Around the 1,700-mile sand-and-stone wall runs a belt of more than 10 million landmines, believed to make up one of the densest minefields in the world. It cleaves

It is evening, the last weekend in August, and I am trying to remember what it is like to wear shorts. Sundresses and bathing suits too. I sit on the granite-studded shores of Lake Wahwashkesh in northern Ontario, stretched atop the gray wooden dock

There must be as many works of art on the horrors humanity has endured as there are horrors. More, one might think, but our ever-evolving human history suggests otherwise — or, rather, a certain practice of that discipline, which excavates ever-deepe

In exchange for a profit of two hundred rupees, Kesu-mama decides to marry off his orphaned niece to a wealthy businessman thrice her age. The devastated young girl’s protests are met with traditional pressure to succumb to a fate decided by those wh

There is something, this month, about beginnings. Stay with me, they insist, at varying decibles.

Grandma, why did you powder your face, where are you in such a hurry to get to, standing with the door open to all this wind and not even realizing how crude that rouge looks on you, fixing your makeup must be easier than tending those flowers in the

Didn’t the Italians think we were all the same — greedy Americans in search of our personal paradise?

Why did they choose Sarah? Why did they come to my dry hundred and take, of all the people on this planet, my strange, bony wife?

Do not stop the home from leaving, from dissolving / its bouldered foundation into the bank of bodies beneath.

There’s a special kind of torture in writing novels. It is, of course, The Beginning. Twitter threads and the conferences and podcasts insist, at decibels that seem to increase as quickly as the number of titles on shelves, that if you cannot capture

It’s a quiet night. Chikako can’t sleep if it’s not absolutely quiet, the room completely dark. Hence the darkness, the quiet. Everything as it should be. Good. Nothing to keep her from falling asleep. Except Hana, whispering in the darkness. Hana, C

My grandfather started one of the first coffee farms in Burundi. Will climate change leave any trees for my grandson?

In June, I visited Josh Kline’s solo exhibition, Project for a New American Century, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. I found, to my surprise, my own name on one of the wall labels. I worked as a production and editing assistan

The British Empire used mental health to assert white supremacy in its colonies. But we still needed a diagnosis.

I’m an adult, but my grandmother makes my shirts. The ones with good wicking properties that I wear on my morning runs. Five days per week she sits behind an industrial sewing machine in a room full of them, all cream-colored with metallic details. T

The summers swole me: knuckles first, then wrists right down to the elbows. My family there — richer, unknown to me, and queerly religious. Megachurch parishioners. Gossips. Voices cantering through the dark with emphatic lilt. Porch light interrupte

The Oslo-based artist and musician reflects on Gyre, her latest exhibition at the intersection of sound and visual art.

On the literary world's erasure of translators as artists — and on the beauty and challenge of translating an inimitable Korean poet

One day before the fall of Saigon, an infant Beth Nguyen was carried by her father out of the country and toward a new life in the United States. But her mother stayed — “or was left behind in Saigon. For many years, I wouldn’t know which phrasing wa

Pity, when it exists, is tribal. In other words: I feel sorry for you because you are not like me.

There are times when a family has an aura of completion. Remembering such a time feels like gazing at a masterpiece in an art gallery. You might find yourself taking one or two steps backward to absorb the harmonious perfection of the entire image. O

Kevin Smith rolls into town and sells out the local arts theater. The place is packed with remarkably full beards and colorful hair, Iowan stoners wearing Mooby’s and Quick Stop uniforms and graphic tees they got at Spencer’s. I’m certainly no except

The starved omega had red fur on the tips of her ears. I could feel the saliva on her tongue.