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October 7, 2022
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Fifty Years of Song

Spotlight

Fifty Years of Song

Joy Harjo celebrates her life in poetry

by Stephanie Bastek | Friday, October 07, 2022
The Mule on the Stairs

Web Essays

The Mule on the Stairs

Remembering the school in the midcentury South where “We Shall Overcome” was born

by Richard Tillinghast | Thursday, October 06, 2022
Life Is Short

Asturias Days

Life Is Short

by Clellan Coe | Wednesday, October 05, 2022
“The Yellow Star That Goes With Me” by Jessica Greenbaum

Read Me a Poem

“The Yellow Star That Goes With Me” by Jessica Greenbaum

Poems read aloud, beautifully

by Amanda Holmes | Tuesday, October 04, 2022
A Midcentury Bender

Web Essays

A Midcentury Bender

Revisiting Mad Men, 15 years later

by Eric Wills | Monday, October 03, 2022
Ordinary Madness

Smarty Pants Podcast

Ordinary Madness

Kate Summerscale on the fixations and fears that make us human

by Stephanie Bastek | Friday, September 30, 2022
Ordinary Madness

Article

The Degradation Drug

A medication prescribed for Parkinson’s and other diseases can transform a patient’s personality, unleashing heroic bouts of creativity or a torrent of shocking, even criminal behavior

by Carl Elliott | Thursday, September 29, 2022
The Vocabulary Problem

Asturias Days

The Vocabulary Problem

by Clellan Coe | Wednesday, September 28, 2022
“Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore

Read Me a Poem

“Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore

Poems read aloud, beautifully

by Amanda Holmes | Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Jackie Milad

Portrait of the Artist

Jackie Milad

Our Historied Selves

by Noelani Kirschner | Monday, September 26, 2022
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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

2nd Look

The Story of a Stare Down

by Penelope Rowlands

Hilary Mantel, one of Britain’s most revered novelists, died last month at the age of 70. She is beloved for her sweeping Wolf Hall trilogy, for which she won two Booker Prizes. But long before rehabilitating Thomas Cromwell’s reputation, Mantel was unparalleled in her crystalline dissections of power, whether between girls at the University of London or Dantonists in the French Revolution. In honor of Mantel’s enormous contributions to literature, dive back into her Tudor world with Penelope Rowlands’s essay about one of the key power dynamics Mantel explored: that between Cromwell and Sir Thomas More.

Smarty Pants Podcast

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Current Issue

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The Root Problem

Cover Story

The Root Problem

Harvesting wild ginseng has sustained Appalachian communities for generations—so what will happen when there are no more plants to be found?

by Matthew Denton-Edmundson
Autumn 2022

Commonplace Book

Autumn 2022

by Anne Matthews
A Monstrous Burden

Article

A Monstrous Burden 

The original Godzilla illuminates the plight of  Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but what can it say about the present, about the violence endured by Asian Americans during Covid-19?

by Claire Stanford

Shelf Life

On the Road cover

On the Road

By by Ceilidh Michelle

An excerpt from Vagabond: Venice Beach, Slab City and Points in Between by Ceilidh Michelle
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