“I think it’s time to question what we ask of authors, particularly new authors, in exchange forpaying attention to them,” Portalmania author Debbie Urbanski wrote in a recent LitHub article,raising important questions about personal boundaries in the context of book marketing, thaticky blood ritual of churning out social media posts, podcast interviews . . .
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And malt does more than Milton canTo justify God’s ways to man. –A. E. Housman There are Porters and Stouts; there are Browns.(And these beer styles are rightly renowned.)Though I’ve tried quite a few,I’ve sought differently brewedTypes of malty. Come taste what I’ve found. And before it gets sultry outside,while a vestige . . .
Read More“At my apartment complex’s scarf sale, I tried to give away my last boyfriend. But E was such a beautiful and soft red scarf. He smelled like pumpkin spice. A pumpkin spice–smelling scarf is too unique to give away. I didn’t want some other person enjoying the spices of my labor. So . . .
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FOOTSTEPS RUNNING AWAY FROM THEMSELVES Rapid under the feet of children whogrew up too soonand changed their shoesand their featuresin a hurry Time was rushinglike the ambulancesstruggling to run after explosions In the streets that tear their clothesand the birds that change their shapes There is death on both sidesand death is . . .
Read MoreNathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy have selected Chard deNiord’s poem “This Side of You” from MR’s Spring 2024 issue (Vol. 65, Issue 1) for the prestigious prize. CHARD DENIORD is the author of 7 books of poetry, most recently In My Unknowing (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) and Interstate (U. of Pittsburgh . . .
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I expect you would be surprised that your death affected me so much that I spoke at two services for you, that I am writing about you now. We were friends, but we had not stayed in touch. So, it surprises me too. But you were a friend to me during a . . .
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Across twelve chapters, Beliso-De Jesús presents the history of medicalized state-sanctioned violence via excited delirium syndrome through a compelling combination of historiography, ethnography, and memoir. Peppered throughout the text are the author’s personal stories and interactions, which help contextualize the far-reaching implications of the diagnosis and her positionality as an Afro-Latiné woman and scholar researching the spectrum of Black and Brown death within the U.S. carceral system.
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Ever since my mother stopped reading my poemsI have searched for death in the eyes of my friendsAs if I had been lodged in a fableThat insulates me from dying suddenly, and without reckoning.—Translated from Rana al-Tonsi’s “27,” Volume 66, Issue 1 (Spring 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces . . .
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She became a lactation consultant, perhaps to help people like me, whose babies shrieked when breastfed as though the milk were poison, and then she became a Lamaze instructor, perhaps to help people like me, whose birth plans were ripped apart by malpositioned babies and maternal exhaustion.—from “What We Weren’t Expecting,” Volume . . .
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Editor’s note: April 23, 2025, on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the celebrated Italian documentarian Agostino Ferrente presented his 2019 film Selfie, which first screened at the Berlin Film Festival, was nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards, and subsequently won prizes at film festivals in Luxembourg . . .
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