Missing Persons and Missed Connections – PEN Transmissions
Em Dial on archives and invitations of silence.| PEN Transmissions
“One day you’re gonna have to face / the deep, dark truthful mirror,” Elvis Costello sings. “And it’s gonna tell you things that I still / love you too much to say.” I used to think that was a perfect breakup song to give someone, but I have begun to think about what […] The post Found Objects: Myself appeared first on Common Reader.| Common Reader
I saw Joe1 almost every day. In the gym lobby, behind his cart; at the classroom door, sweeping; on the stairs, pausing for breath. A familiar figure, though never more than that. Joe, a janitor who works in our university. I did not know his background, his job conditions, or whether he […] The post The Work That Holds the World Together appeared first on Common Reader.| Common Reader
Last weekend, I went on a date with a Nigerian American. We had arranged to meet under the awning of a small bar on Delmar Loop in St. Louis, a city that on that particular night, felt suspended in a soft, electric glow. The air was warm, carrying the distant hum of […] The post Two Nigerians at a Table appeared first on Common Reader.| Common Reader
Niko Turmanidze, Manana Jobava, and Maiko Zakaraia of Lotus Eaters (Photo: Max Avdeev). Niko Turmanidze, Manana Jobava, and Maiko Zakaraia of Lotus Eaters (Photo: Max Avdeev) In the heart of the Caucasus, a rising wave of vintners is redefining the balance between ancient techniques and modern tastes. The post How Women Are Breathing New Life Into Georgia’s 8,000-Year Wine Tradition appeared first on Saveur.| Saveur
Deepa Rajagopalan on creating space at the centre.| PEN Transmissions
Em Dial on archives and invitations of silence.| PEN Transmissions
So here I am crying in the dark of the movie theater as the trailers play. It’s all so perfectly American, the wild swings and creative risks, the power and money of Hollywood, the onscreen representations that minority groups fought for, tooth and nail, for decades. As I recline in my comfortable seat and take […]| The Harvest Maid’s Revenge
Christine Wu on reimagining family history.| PEN Transmissions
A student shares her experience attending a 12-step program and reflects on how the religious aspects of these programs isolated her.| The Temple News
Do these people not know that now is now is now is NOW?| Common Reader
They feared the olive trees — the trees that know, more than anyone, who the true owners of this land are.| Vox Populi
A student reflects on her use of Snapchat voice notes to stay in touch with her best friend when they lived in different cities and how it played a role in her move to Philadelphia.| The Temple News
It was the kind of area where my incomplete understanding, which should mean comedy, became not tragedy, not emptiness or absence, but presence without meaning.| Common Reader
Nurcan Baysal on Kurdish language, culture and identity. Translated by Nazım Dikbas.| PEN Transmissions
Magdalena Blažević on the massacre of Kiseljak.| PEN Transmissions
Losing both parents left me furious—at family, at the medical system, at myself. Here's what I learned from it. The post 4 Ways That Grief Rage Taught Me About Self-Preservation and Healing appeared first on Modern Loss.| Modern Loss
Grieving and mothering changed how I hold joy, pain, and memory—all at the same time. The post Why I Stopped Trying to Cherish Every Moment appeared first on Modern Loss.| Modern Loss
Thank you for the lyrics that somehow understood my soul and this seemingly impossible grief journey. The post Dear Noah Kahan, ‘Godlight’ Helped Me Survive Perinatal Loss appeared first on Modern Loss.| Modern Loss
Long after her death, I used the tools of journalism to reckon with memory, regret, and love. The post Writing the Story My Mother Never Got to Tell appeared first on Modern Loss.| Modern Loss
What it felt like to watch her slow, surreal demise during a slow, surreal moment in the world. The post My Landlord Died From Cancer While We Sheltered In Place Together appeared first on Modern Loss.| Modern Loss
I always struggled to identify with my son's ADHD – until my muddled mind schooled me after his sudden death.| Modern Loss
From the mouth down to the gut, here’s what science has to say about bad breath—and how to treat it from the inside out.| Saveur
Jordan Aitcheson-Labarr on viewing a turbulent world through Hip Hop| PEN Transmissions
Sana – a pseudonym – writes from Iran.| PEN Transmissions
Kamran Sajid on Panjabi folk music| PEN Transmissions
The foreman led me into a cavernous room that took up most of the ground floor, where three huge machines unspooled 16-ton rolls of tin plate into sheets to be turned into cans. The machines resemb…| Vox Populi
On International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus, Nobel Laureate Ales Bialiatski on letters, solidarity, and compassion. Translated by Valzhyna Mort.| PEN Transmissions
Susannah Dickey on the true crime media engine, Palestine, grief and the PEN Heaney Prize.| PEN Transmissions
Tetyana Teren on time in London with Victoria Amelina. Translated by Larissa Babij.| PEN Transmissions
AJ Layla on legacy and creative instinct.| PEN Transmissions
Adèle Oliver on drill, resistance, and the Art Not Evidence campaign.| PEN Transmissions
I don’t know what happened, not really. My memories reveal, as if through curtains slightly opened, only a blurred something outside a greasy window that I can’t make out, or even ascribe a shape to. But something was, is, there, something dark and menacing and fixed on me.| Popula
THIS IS AN essay in speculative theology. In it I explore an idea — the general Mormon expectation of future polygamy — that has important religious and moral implications but about which there is little definite scriptural direction and no clear official doctrine. I attempt here, in the spirit of a venerable tradition in Mormon […]|
…. For a moment Abijah felt stunned; in this, his first real emergency, he had almost forgotten God! He turned to Brother Tuckett. Clory, sitting on a boulder near-by, wondered at the sudden purpose in Brother Tuckett’s movements. What were they going to do? And then she saw Brother Tuckett appear with the bottle of […]|
WHEN I WAS quite young, I had two profound spiritual experiences, more like encounters, that became the grounding realities of my life. One convinced me of the personal reality of the Savior and that what he most fundamentally requires of us is total consecration of our means, our time, and our talents in service to […]|
IT MIGHT HAVE been 1986, because Easter came in March and I was on my way to Montreal. But I went to see Dustin Hoffman in The Death of a Salesman (bought a ticket at the last minute from a scalper), so it must have been two years earlier on my way to Boston. When I […]|
Edgar to Gloucester in King Lear: Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither. June 1982 I grew up in a safe valley. The years five through twelve, when we are most sensuously attached to the landscape and when, I think, the foundations of identity are firmly laid, I lived in gardens […]|
