Nancy Holochwost

Listen to Poems from Our May Issue

Most of us turn to fiction or memoir for great storytelling, but sometimes poetry fits the bill just as well. Listen as the authors’ recordings bring the three poems featured in our May issue to life.

Listen to Poems from Our April Issue

Listen to the authors read the three poems featured in our April issue. These poems all touch on themes of what we give away or leave behind.

The Love of the Game

Selections from the Archive

Mac Crane’s essay in our March issue, “Loving a Sport That Doesn’t Always Love Me Back,” explores the author’s complex relationship with athletics and identity. Keep reading for selections from our archive that capture the beauty, transformation, and intensity sports bring to our lives.

Listen to Poems from Our March Issue

Listen to the authors read the two transporting poems featured in our March issue. These vivid poems describe escapes of two very different kinds.

Listen to Poems from Our February Issue

Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our February issue. Each poem touches on a “what if”: an uncertain or changeable moment when a different future is possible.

Listen to Poems from Our January Issue

Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our January issue. Each one contains an image that stops me in my tracks: a motionless panther; a dark mine shaft; the turn of a lock.

An American Disease

Anders Carlson-Wee on Dumpster Diving in a Culture of Waste

For ten years Anders Carlson-Wee got almost everything he needed from the trash: food, clothes, furniture, lamps. He wrote about his experiences in his essay “The Salmonella Special,” which appears in our November issue, and in his new poetry collection, Disease of Kings, released this October by W.W. Norton. When we spoke over Zoom, I asked him to tell me more about this lifestyle. We talked about capitalism, loneliness, freedom, and one of the greatest hauls of his dumpster-diving career.

Looking in a New Way

Maria Kuznetsova on Absurdity and Postpartum Insomnia

When I read Maria Kuznetsova’s story “Sandwoman,” I was immediately drawn to its offbeat tone and to the narrator’s voice, which is in turns playful, exuberant, dark, and funny. Though much of the story is fantastical, it speaks volumes about the real-life experiences of women who struggle with their physical and mental health postpartum. Maria’s imaginative and surprising perspective made me want to dig into the story’s origins when I got to talk to her.

What We Can Do

Chera Hammons on Writing about the Natural World

Chera Hammons’s hometown of Amarillo, Texas, is part of the region once known as the Great American Desert. . . . The landscape and wildlife around Chera’s home informs much of her writing, including her poem “Curve-Billed Thrasher” in our June 2023 issue. “It’s a strange place to live,” she told me. “I feel like it gets in your blood.”. . . We discussed donkey breeds, the challenges of gardening, and writing as a practice of forgiveness.