Video: Elif Shafak | The Politics of Fiction
Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.
Emmelie Prophète: The Villages of God (excerpt)
I was not afraid. I’d grown used to the sound of guns. I grew up in this Cité where there’s never been a truce, where death does the rounds at noon just … Continue reading
Peter Makuck: Out and Back
Probably my tenth trip to the front window in an hour. I’m looking at the yard, cellphone in hand, getting footage of my neighbor’s German Shepherd. He crosses the street, trots up … Continue reading
Charles Davidson: Sea Saga
Shipmates, friends, and family affectionately called him “Captain.” Throughout his long years in the merchant marine, and until his dying day at the age of seventy-five, Thomas Cromwell spun many a captivating yarn, enthralling the hearts of young and old alike.
Meg Pokrass: Traveling Companion
The ratio of sad men to happy men was tilting toward sad. Single men were sad and claimed to not be attracted to people anymore. They changed their names and dyed their hair. They had dead cats. She was getting used to it.
Kimberly Parish Davis: The Messenger
When he came to the bottom of his street he could hear the screams. Chaos unfolded before him. Houses were burning and women were running hunched over as they tried to protect their children. Soldiers on horseback ran them down, shooting and slashing and impaling people indiscriminately.
Sean Connolly: Invasion
The low winter sun streaks through the streets and the dry hedges and barren trees shed a maroon dust. The birds go batty in Appalachia, celebrating an early spring, and … Continue reading
Video: Bob Marley | Redemption Song
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Peter Makuck: Day on the River
It was during Christmas vacation that I first met Mr. Talbot. His son, Jean-Luc, was my good friend and classmate at a small Franciscan college in a French-Canadian enclave in … Continue reading
Peter Makuck: Triggers
That look on his face. After all these years, I’d love to punch him again.
Meg Pokrass: Moments with Crochet Hooks
Back then she and her mother waited for the phone to ring, for money to plump itself up and walk through their door. Moments passed with yarn and crochet hooks.
Mel Packer: Angie’s Place
Where back in the corner, there’s always some guy in a Pirates ballcap with skin like an old leather shoe who’s nursing the cheapest beer on tap….
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: When I Shut the Door
The news arrived by e-mail — a scribble of a long, single sentence, broken up, like little chunks of wood, the way a year is broken up into months and weeks, days, hours.
Dan Turello: Craft your own renaissance with tips from Boccaccio’s Decameron
A few years ago, on a crisp winter afternoon, I found a beautiful bound translation of The Decameron at the Black Swan bookstore in Staunton, Virginia….I bought it immediately and took it back to a friend’s cabin where a group of us had gathered for the weekend.
Vox Populi 