Cairo Al-Rifa'i Mosque | Photo by Mohammed Moussa | CC BY-SA 3.0 An Iranian woman living in the US seeks to understand the meaning of home on a journey to Egypt to visit the burial place…

Interior of Arbatskaya subway station in Moscow, Russia A woman sweeping the Moscow metro with a twig broom, a violinist playing a Beatles tune, and Chekhov: Philip Metres reflects on his…

Translator’s note: The following text by Lin Yi-Han, like her novel Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, is based on the theme of what it’s like to dwell in a body that carries traum…

What Is Lost Can you picture the Argentine pampa? Flat fields, eucalyptus trees, a seemingly inoffensive landscape where a gray sunset might use your boiling blood to paint a path…

Transfer of Saint Remi relics, stained glass window in the Basilica of Saint Clotilde in Paris, France Named after a medieval French bishop, a transgender poet and essayist reflects on th…

Photo courtesy of the author. for Juan José Hurtado, in memoriam For the narrator of the following crónica, 16mm films made by Kaqchikel villagers, flying ants, and dragonflies…

Gloria Blizzard and Jazz, Lake Ontario, Canada | Photo by Heidi Seirekidis This essay takes the form of a jazz standard. Nestled within the intro and outro are alternating A and B section…

Photo by by Elena Croitoru A countryside flâneuse in search of her deceased grandfather contemplates anchoring, wandering, and the small marks we leave on the world. How does one ge…

Girma Berta, Asmara XII (2018), digital archival print, 45 x 60 cm / Courtesy of Addis Fine Art Oscillating between Asmara, Eritrea, and Washington, DC, the narrator reflects on…

Photo provided by Nina Kossman A family’s history, Soviet history, and the role of a father’s stamp collection. Do you see this little metal box? It was surely unusual for its time—…

“Demeter and Persephone Terracotta Myrina 100 BCE” by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 A car racing down an empty steppe highway frames this essay from Kazak…

M. Florine Démosthène, Wounds #1, collage on paper, 22 x 30 in. / Courtesy of the artist There was once a beautiful little bear called Baby Bear. One day, Baby Bear went for a wa…

M. Florine Démosthène, But I Have To, collage on paper, 44 x 60 in. / Courtesy of the artist A djeli (commonly known as a griot) is a West African storyteller who is the keeper o…

Illustration by Maya Ish-Shalom Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes.   Popol Twenty-three…

Illustration by Avery Holmes “Bakery Scent is a complex that cannot be dismantled or piecemealed,” yet the author still searches for that perfect madeleine, especially the one that can no…

Photo by Krisztian Matyas / Unsplash “Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her…

Armando Diaz / Flickr In that swirl of ideas, stuck in the middle of that overpopulation of bodies, I lose my cardboard piece. That is a sign too, another type of sign, a message from the…

Photo: Havana, Cuba by Tiago Claro / Unsplash In this work of creative nonfiction from Cuba, plague is something common shared with those who lived in Thebes. I carefully open a pre…

 

 

 

     

IN SEPTEMBER, Abrams Books will publish Sarah Mirk’s stories of ten people who spent time at Guantánamo since the opening of Camp X-Ray in 2002, including service members, prisoners,…

Photo:  José Pablo Iglesias / Unsplash A girl learns her first lessons about cheating and death at her grandparents’ house, playing cards and Scrabble and listening to them read from…

Photo: Luiz Guimaraes / Unsplash Follow a writer-flâneuse on a New York City odyssey, appreciating life’s smaller miracles in a city with many entry points. West 32nd / Broadway. Th…