Sam Risak
Sam Risak is a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University and the creative-nonfiction editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer’s Chronicle. (samrisak.com)
Lesson Plan
Pranav Jani on Free Speech and College Activism
The Right and I agree on the potential of universities as a space in which students develop ideas that can transform the world. The difference is, they want to stamp it out, and I want to encourage it.
April 2026The Tap Out
I want to say that when Gavin told me he would kill me, I did not believe him, though there was nothing to suggest he was bluffing: He held me down in bed, his hand on my throat, knees locked around my waist, the alcohol-induced sheen to his blue eyes suggesting he could commit to his words without much thought. But the fear I should have felt—that I had felt minutes before, when I was running around, trying to escape him—was gone. I was gone. I had retreated into what the two of us referred to as my “shutdown mode.”
June 2025The Strong, Silent Type
Jaclyn A. Siegel On Masculinity And Male Body Image
Risak: How is the “masculine body” defined?
Siegel: In the U.S. we typically see a mesomorphic ideal: lean, muscular, and with a low body-fat percentage. This is persistent across the U.S. and common in LGBTQ+ communities in particular. Sexual-minority men are at elevated risk for eating disorders due in part to the lean ideal being perpetuated in their communities.
March 2023Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
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