Black Earth Institue: Social Distancing
Date: June 4, 2020
In dreams I walk through crowds, brushing arms, knocking elbows. Skin to skin: hands are bare. Crocuses congregate in beds, along sidewalks. Unlatching city gates,
Date: June 4, 2020
In dreams I walk through crowds, brushing arms, knocking elbows. Skin to skin: hands are bare. Crocuses congregate in beds, along sidewalks. Unlatching city gates,
Date: June 4, 2020
A flare of russet,green fronds, surpriseof flush againstthe bare grey cypressin winter woods. Cardinal wild pine,quill-leaf airplantor dog-drink-water.Spikes of bright bloom–exotic plumage.
Date: June 4, 2020
“Be stubborn and ultimately believe in your writing,” advises first-time novelist Mia Heavener ’00, “especially if you are having crappy writing days.” On April 13, Heavener visited Wyn Kelley’s literature […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Tess Taylor’s new poetry collection Rift Zone is published this month. She shares five books about writing place in a time of crisis.
Date: June 4, 2020
Poet Tess Taylor questioned what it means to be creative, when every day feels like a radical reinvention of life. “These days, helping myself and my family steer a way around sadness, […]
Date: June 4, 2020
LINCOLN, Neb. — My mother was born into a flu-stricken household at the height of the pandemic of 1918. Within minutes she was swaddled in a homemade quilt and placed […]
Date: June 4, 2020
1985 Long and black, the streaksof gray, aflutter in the lightwind as she prepares to tell her story at the Federal Building:reaching into a tattered sackshe pulls out a doll […]
Date: June 4, 2020
The Skin of Meaning He was late to the party and without directions,though his invitation was secure, and his instinctskeenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we arewaiting to […]
Date: June 4, 2020
Ascension Didi Jackson The blue jays lay claimto the raspberry busharriving in groups of four or five:one holds a rubied berry in its beakand feeds it up in the white […]
Date: June 4, 2020
after Käthe Kollwitz I heard they no longer sew eyelids of the dead shut.At the morgue, I busied myself countingthe lacerations on my husband’s neck and wrists.I wore sunglasses and […]
Date: September 20, 2023
Krueger offers a memoir about caring for a sick child in poetry form. Krueger explores connections between flora, motherhood, and illness in this poetry collection. The title refers to the way […]
Date: September 13, 2023
Acclaimed novelist and poet Laila Halaby’s memoir, The Weight of Ghosts, documents her struggle to bear up after the devastating loss after her first-born son, Raad, 21, was killed on the […]
Date: September 6, 2023
What does it mean to heal your inner child? To overcome past trauma? To find the puzzle piece that had been lost years ago, or in another life? In a […]
Date: September 6, 2023
Many American Jews are unaffiliated with Judaism. Some do not observe Jewish rituals in any regular way; others might not worship at all. And yet Jewishness still pervades their lives: […]
Date: September 5, 2023
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by University of Utah distinguished professor Katharine Coles, offers not only nature-based poems that stir and satiate hunger, but also serrated verse that […]
Date: September 5, 2023
“My story has never been mine to tell,” says novelist, poet, and creative writing teacher Laila Halaby in her memoir, The Weight of Ghosts. “It is squished between other people’s tall […]
Date: August 29, 2023
Author Madeleine Nakamura’s science fiction thriller “Cursebreakers,” embarks on a “mind bending” battle between magicians, witches, medical professionals and the military in the year 3016. All of the drama in this […]
Date: August 17, 2023
A Plucked Zither is Phuong T. Vuong’s sophomore poetry collection. Vuong’s poems draw upon her experience as a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American raised in Oakland, California, and echo the familiar themes […]
Date: August 15, 2023
CURSEBREAKERS by Madeleine Nakamura is a novel as electric as the lightning-bolt magic its protagonist wields, filled with curses, destruction, and piercing heartache. Sometimes vicious and violent; all times spectacular […]
Date: August 15, 2023
“A remarkable work that is both a poignant story of queer coming-of-age and a breathtaking history of modern Russia.”