Vox Populi: OMG! An Interview with Michael Simms about his Debut Novel ‘Bicycles of the Gods’
Who wouldn’t love a story about badass vigilante nuns and the end of the world?
Angele Ellis: “Raised Incorruptible” | In Book of Entangled Souls, Richard St. John tests the boundaries of life and death, compassion and spirituality 
St. John looks deeply and compassionately where others might glance away or move on, and draws the reader along with him.
Michael Simms: Puppy Rolling
When I take Josie to the dog park she likes to find a puppy, preferably a rare breed like a Shiba Inu or a New Guinea Singing Dog and roll it down the hill.
Baron Wormser: Conspiracy and Character
Not so strangely, the events of January 6 have a Roman cast to them as a vengeful, self-styled emperor urges the plebeians to attack the Capitol
Moudhy Al-Rashid: Ancient Akkadian poems and medical texts reveal grief’s universals
A long compilation of various therapies given to improve a patient’s happiness was unearthed in a house in Ashur, a city along the Tigris River.
Myisha Cherry: From the erotic to the political – the legacy of Audre Lorde
The feminist poet and scholar Audre Lorde left a legacy that my generation, women, people of colour and members of the LGBTQ community have widely and wisely embraced. And we still … Continue reading
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.
Robert Bernard Hass: El Duende | On the Origins of Rafael Nadal’s Tennis Artistry
As Rafael Nadal attempts to win his unprecedented 14th French Open title, whether he wins or loses, we can rest assured that he will dazzle us with an athletic beauty that emerges from this ethos.
The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant (Egyptian Middle Kingdom 2000 BCE)
A poor peasant, Khun-Anup, is traveling to market with his donkeys heavily laden with goods to exchange for supplies for his family when Nemtynakht, a vassal of the high steward Rensi, notices the peasant approaching his lands and devises a scheme to steal Khun-Anup’s donkeys and supplies.
Baron Wormser: A Poetry Proposal
There is no shortage of poems and no shortage of strategies to deliver the poems. The failing lies in our wariness. It’s true: to embrace poetry is to embrace a degree of uncertainty. Yet what else is life?
Anita Gonzalez: A white librettist wrote an opera about Emmett Till – and some critics are calling for its cancellation
To me, the backlash against the white librettist is ultimately a waste of time. Not only is there room for works done in collaboration with Black artists, but cross-cultural, interethnic collaborations also add to the richness and versatility of performed storytelling.
Erasmus: Adagia
Adagia is the title of an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus’ collection of proverbs is believed to be one of the most monumental ever assembled.
Anoa J. Changa: Muslims and the War on Terror
Maha Hilal’s “Innocent Until Proven Muslim” lays bare the War on Terror’s toll on constitutional rights and marginalized communities.
Paul Christensen: Portrait of the Artist | James Dickey
He liked one phrase especially, “every word is a sunken Atlantis.” It said a lot about the way poetry functioned –every word in lyric was attached to a root mass of meanings, associations, feelings.
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