ESSAYS
By Aditi Parikh: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, a tragedy likely written in late 1593 and set in ancient Rome, is a meditation on early modern race relations that still resonates today.
By Thomas J. Sojka: The 2020s have arrived, bringing sensational headlines on the state of the global economy that anticipate “another Roaring Twenties” or condemn the comparison as “absurd.”
By Adrienne Sockwell: As a historian, and as a person interested in most narratives of the past, I realize the unique value of Ancestry.com as a research tool …
By Carly Lewis: “Rock and Roll Never Dies!” From buskers on La Via del Corso to Eurovision winners, Måneskin shows what it means to earn a growing global platform and use it well…
By Megan Cole: It’s a truism for Octavia Butler fans: the postapocalyptic California landscape of her landmark Parable of the Sower (1993) is nearly indistinguishable from contemporary reality.
By Rebecca Lipperini: I love the supermarket — fiercely, obsessively, weirdly. I go to the supermarket when I feel overwhelmed. And it turns out I’m not alone.
CREATIVE PROSE
By Noelle Marie Falcis: Space is a concept that most can never understand; Autumn and I, we know it well. We tussled with it floating upon the endless sea …
By Nicole Harkin: The front yard of the house we bought in Lebanon, Illinois, needed a lot of work. The driveway wasn’t quite level. Every weekend for a month, Ed dug into the earth …
By Penina Eilberg-Schwartz: It’s strange to have the idea on the boat where there are no books, no letters — only water and the different kinds of light in it.
By Isabelle Rubio: Mom and Dad knocked briefly and rushed into my room. Half-asleep, I dug one foot, then the other, into the carpet. It was a bit too early to wake up for school …
By Stefanie Doucette: Like most Tuesdays, we spend the night out at our favorite Divisadero Street dive bar, swapping dirty stories for fun over $3 sake bombs.
By Ben Libman: At the top of the hill whose slope is bisected by the Living Stone, there lies a ruined castle that once belonged to a lineage of dukes.
By Alec Sandoval: It’s always difficult to see them when I log on to teach class. Crammed into a small room with one laptop, two of the five students are off-screen. Because I am unable to see all of them, I say each student’s name aloud to ensure they are present …
By Chiseche Salome Mibenge: An elite white academic institution in California has convened a virtual workshop on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for a cohort of humanities faculty.
By Claire Dee: There were plenty of kids we made fun of in high school — the girl with the face tattoo; the foreign exchange student from Wales; Male Leslie — but Anna was different. Nothing ever fazed her.
POETRY
By Mario A. Gómez-Zamora: I don’t really know who chose who. / I just stopped holding my heart’s emotions and / then, when I was about to die, / you appeared!
By Bre (Nyx) Byrd: We all begin, cradled in the water. The storm of our mother’s womb, we, torrential in our desire to be known and know the world, initially seek out of the water…
By Leonardo Gil Gómez: It might have been the cold or the urge to be alone. / I couldn’t take it any longer. / I hunkered down in the corner …
By Kendall Moore: Don’t marry the one you are most passionately in love with because the highs are high, but the lows — / my mother once said to me
By Rebecca Chhay: I went out today / for the first time / in a while. // I thought about wearing / my new black dress
By Rebecca Samuelson: Strangers packed in love seats / dull metal bars covered in stolen / lives to grip overhead
By Lindsey Pannor: Texas Chocolate / double butter-stick / sheet cake / with pistachios (& big flats of salt)
By Alyssa Ranola: Walking in the park at 12 on a Sunday, watching / the trees and people writhing / how could they have risen / so early?
By Jessica Doble: Don’t tell me about the osprey in Louisiana. / Tell me something square instead.
By nanya jhingran: night falls on the lodge slowly / then all at once / in a gradual shock the crows / feathered loneliness
VISUAL ART
