Literature

Before starting a job as a radio copywriter, where I frequently wrote ads for strip clubs and sex shops, I worked the counter at a small bakery near a college campus. Many customers were professors who made small talk while I sliced their olive loaves. On occasion – not daily, but enough to see a

The theatre is a perennially popular setting for novelists and no wonder. The tawdry glamour and sense of spectacle make it a rich gift for any author, but it’s what happens behind the scenes that I find the most interesting. This is particularly true for those novels set on the 19th-century London stage or in

“Inte hora,” a general tells his wife early on in Dalia Azim’s Country of Origin. You are free, in Arabic. The saying appears at first during a quarrel over politics in the intimacy of a Cairo home while, outside, revolts against Egypt’s then leader, King Farouk, combust the city. A saying echoed three decades later

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It seems like every day there’s a new slate of bad news for the queer community in the United States. From anti-trans legislation in Texas to the Florida governor signing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill to books being pulled off shelves—nationwide—for no reason other than who their writers are: queer authors, authors of color, and

Exit Strategies for Alaskan Wine Bars Leigh Newman Share article “Valley of the Moon” by Leigh Newman My sister is in town and wants to meet. I pick Suite 100 for its wide selection of French varietals and its convenient location on the B55 People Mover. The People Mover pulls up late as usual. The

Melissa Chadburn’s novel A Tiny Upward Shove pulls us headlong into the short and tragic life of Marina, a ward of the state who falls victim to a serial killer targeting vulnerable women on Canada’s Highway Of Tears. Marina could be just another poor woman of color selling her body whose murder earns a brief

proofs of the living Engraved in the nation of the bodyThat fetters or sets free Unto implacable absenceOur livesWill pave Life’sWay.  proofs of beauty In these daybreaks of still-fermenting nightWith what impetusto climb? With what eye to contemplateCities, faces, centuries, sufferings, hope? With what hands to digan eternally fecund soilRaise up an edifice of open

I was in the first grade, age five, when I was awarded a hamper for being the “Best English Language” student. During the subsequent parents’ meeting my class teacher complimented my parents for their hard work on my language skills. Ever so proud my parents beamed, “We talk in English at home.” Born in a

Today, the world is divided between those who can easily travel and those who cannot, separated by the simple luck of where they happened to be born. Yet many of the unlucky dare to try, setting out on epic journeys out of desperation or necessity, even when the odds are stacked against them. My non-fiction

This is Daddy’s Last Check and I Deserve It The Winner Is The bank closes in fifteen minutes and this check has to go in and clear before Daddy ends his hospice stay. Dies. I grab my purse and keys, and dash out. My sister could have helped change a diaper or two. Instead, she

Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Saskatchewan Métis and Cree writer and activist. Her debut novel, Probably Ruby (Hogarth / Penguin Random House), will be published in April 2022 in the US, following the August 2021 publication in Canada. Her short-story collection, Just Pretending (Coteau Books, 2014), was the 2019 One Book One Province selection for Saskatchewan.

I remember when I first sought out nature writing. My predominant sense of who got to be a nature writer—who got to take the adventure and arrive home transformed—was as cliched as anyone else’s, and for good reason. I had never known any women nature writers, nor read them. Nor could I find them easily.

Andrey Kurkov’s novel Grey Bees takes place in eastern Ukraine, a region that has been at war with Russian separatists since 2014. Translated by Boris Dralyuk, the story follows Sergey Sergeyich, a beekeeper living in what is called the “grey zone,” the liminal space between the warring sides. Sergeyich’s village is all but abandoned except

Aamina Ahmad’s debut novel The Return of Faraz Ali begins with a moment of no return. Born and raised in Lahore’s old city, the young Faraz is forced to leave behind his mother and his sister Rozina. It isn’t until Faraz is an adult in 1968 working as a policeman, that he goes back to

Up until my early 20s, I had never heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act. I remember taking classes on Mississippi history during my childhood in Oxford, then Texas government, and later the story of the Alamo during my teenage years in Austin. Our history textbooks were heavy and thick, always a pain to take home.

“I dropped from my mother’s mouth with an axe, a net of lemons to which I was allergic, a limp, and a pair of Ray-Bans that fit awkwardly on my nose,” says the speaker of “Waiting in Line with Hemingway,” from Achy Obejas’s recent bilingual collection of poems, Boomerang/Bumerán. The humor here is mixed with

She Sells Dreams and Delusions at the Sea Shore Chelsea Bieker Share article “Fact of Body” by Chelsea Bieker We lived for a time in a car, my mother and me, alongside a  slow-buzz highway that led to a toxic beach. We had come from the valley to the coast with new plans of making our way