Laura Bernstein-Machlay

Laura Bernstein-Machlay teaches literature and creative writing at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Her work has appeared in the The Georgia Review, Fourth Genre, The North American Review, and the The Massachusetts Review. She is the author of Travelers, a collection of essays.

Starving

The feelings of yearning and loss, when faced with an empty nest, can manifest in striking ways

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Friday February 23, 2024

Bad Jew

Reckoning with a heritage as painfully distant as it is impossible to lose

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Thursday September 22, 2022

The Dinner Party

Certain things shouldn’t be brought up at the dinner table, but in our fraught time, that’s nearly impossible

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Thursday May 26, 2022

Wild Turkey Afternoon

A moment from a week in self-isolation

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Wednesday March 25, 2020
Bernstein-Machlay: The human egg cherry-picks the precise sperm it wants

Why the Egg Matters

A meditation on remembrance, family, and time

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Monday March 2, 2020

Present Tense

Even in this interminable drugstore line, my daughter’s last summer before college is slipping by far too quickly

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Tuesday September 4, 2018

Urban Wild

In slowly gentrifying Detroit, you might see a fox, or even a coyote, but where have all the stray dogs gone?

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Tuesday September 5, 2017

Driving Toward the Breach

Woodward Avenue, the Dream Cruise, and the QLine

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Friday September 1, 2017

The Grand Army of the Republic

Look what’s popping up all over the place

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Friday August 25, 2017

The Little Aquarium That Could

Like Detroit, a tale of rise and fall and rise again

By Laura Bernstein-Machlay | Friday August 18, 2017

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