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The Madness of Militarism

December 25, 2023 - By Norman Solomon

Editor’s note: On November 15, 2023, Norman Solomon delivered the Second Annual Ellsberg Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a lecture series hosted by University’s Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy. The text below is based on a transcript of his remarks, excerpted and edited for publication. In 2019, Ellsberg made UMass the home for his papers; with the help of an anonymous donor, this treasure trove of some 500 boxes of material became part of the...

2023 Contributor Publications

December 22, 2023 - By Staff

Stephen O’Connor's short story collection, Northwest of Boston, was published in January 2023 from Loom Press. 

Penguin Random House published Salar Abdoh's novel, A Nearby...

10 Questions for Lory Bedikian

December 20, 2023 - By Franchesca Viaud

After we make love, I think of the word obliterate

how it means the destruction of something. I think

hostile hands are everywhere. We should probably

nail it all shut. I don't have time to think back to

the fourteenth century because too much is tangling

roots this day and the day after.
—from "Manifesto,'" Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Well, I’ve been writing for decades so I wouldn’t be able to do that. Let me bring back a poem I worked on revising during my MFA. It was a century ago, the year 2000, and I presented something to the workshop group titled “Beyond the Mouth,” which is now the opening poem to...

The Jews

December 15, 2023 - By Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from Italian by Jenny McPhee

The day after the events in Munich, the Catholic Press Association called me to say it was conducting an inquiry regarding the massacre and asked if I would express my opinion. I refused to respond. I told them that I never respond to inquiries.[*]

Pronouncing a few sentences over the telephone seemed both stupid and useless. But later, I wanted to respond to those journalists at length and in detail. I didn’t have only one opinion to express, I had many. Above all, I wanted to collect my thoughts on the subject, thoughts scattered within me.

When a tragedy happens in the world, we find ourselves considering how we would have acted if we...

Color (Earth Primer #9)

December 8, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Photo by Giacomo Sartori: North Algeria, a typical Mediterranean sequence. Light-colored bumps caused by erosion, red soil on the hillsides, dark soil in the hollows.)

(Earth Primer #8)

The hues we have in our heads for landscapes often spring forth from the colors of their soils. Left uncultivated, vegetation would cover such shades over, but plowing and working the soil slam them in our face, as happens with open wounds. At that point, they have the upper hand—proud of their autocratic imprint on the surroundings, of their claim to be the source of beauty. One thinks of the blood-red soils of the Mediterranean or the dazzling clays cut into Appenine ravines. Often, however, the impact is...