Interview
Connecting the Dots of Silence: An Interview with Roberto Lovato
Interviewed by Kevin Cummins
Roberto Lovato’s book Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas was published by Harper in 2020. In this memoir, Lovato, who was born and raised in San Francisco by Salvadoran immigrant parents, portrays his coming-of-age journey from San Francisco Giants fan who pledged allegiance to the U.S. flag, to evangelical Christian, to UC Berkeley student, to Salvadoran guerrilla revolutionary, to investigative journalist.
An alumnus of Antioch’s MFA program in creative writing, Lovato is an educator, journalist, and writer based at the Writers’ Grotto in San Francisco. […]
Writing for Young People
Flirting with Danger
by Kristin Bartley Lenz
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Sophomore year, our history teacher made us keep a daily journal of news headlines that caught our attention. On Friday mornings, we chose one headline each, and shared a summary of the story. A pattern soon emerged.
I brought in the feel-good stories. “Hairdresser Gives Homeless Free Haircuts.” Miranda’s grandparents had emigrated from the Philippines, and she focused on refugees. LaShondra’s uncle died in prison last year, so she brought in police reform and social justice stories. […]
Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction
The Girl with the Turquoise Eye-Shadow
by Nimisha Kantharia
It was mid-December in Mumbai, a city with just one season, hot and humid. Yet the worn cotton curtains of the consulting room I sat in billowed with an afternoon breeze that sent icy fingers down my neck and up my spine […]
Fiction
Echolocation
by Miranda Williams
As I arrive at the Institute and the heater sinks me in stuffy-warm air, I realize I haven’t spoken to you in nearly six years. It’s an icy day. The snow stacks knee-high, floods walkways, turning them to marsh, and the sky is empty—pale white like a beluga whale. I slipped before coming in, and the right half of my clothes are wet-darkened and dripping. […]
Poetry
The Quilted Multiverse / Still Alive / Bitters
by Stephanie Staab
One way, you pass a house with chickens in the yard and you think, “Ah, I’ve always wanted chickens. I’d be better with chickens.” […]
Lunch Special
Nothing Is One Thing: An Interview with Diane Seuss
interviewed by Kirby Chen Mages
Diane Seuss is the 2022 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for her most recent book of poetry, frank:sonnets. She is the author of four other poetry collections, including It Blows You Hollow, Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, winner of the Juniper Prize. Seuss is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2021 recipient of the John Updike Award […]
Gabo Prize Winner
Seven Poems by Humberto Ak’abal
translated by Michael Bazzett
Humberto Ak’abal (1952-2019) was a K’iche’ Mayan poet born in Momostenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala. The highlands are lush, with mountains covered in cloud forest, the trees draped with bromeliads and furred with moss, well adapted to taking a sip from the sideways-drifting morning fog. […]
