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Vocation (Earth Primer #6)

October 27, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Crete Senesi. Photo by Gunther Tschuch, 2008)

(Earth Primer #5)

I don’t know why I ended up with soil as my specialization. I could tell myself it was a matter of chance, since that rendezvous seems to have happened on its own, not as an act of will: I did nothing to bring myself in its direction. Within the ideological framework of my family members (from which, despite appearances, I still hadn’t entirely freed myself), it was definitely the most well-worn path, the least appealing, least appreciated. What really attracted me was writing, but I never believed I had the intellectual gifts needed. If...

10 Questions for Denise Duhamel

October 24, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

I've checked the box acknowledging that, whatever happens,
it won't be your fault—that my insurance policy will cover
everything, except what actually breaks, that you are not responsible
for any data corruption, any mistakes in my bloodwork results,
that your mammogram can only detect so much.
—from "Poem in Which I Read the Terms and Conditions," Volume 64, Issue 3 (Fall 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer! I declared it to my parents when I was 5 years old, but I started writing “books” in the fourth grade while sequestered in Crawford Allen Children’s Hospital in Providence, RI.  A severe...

Calvino fa la conchiglia

October 20, 2023 - By Domenico Scarpa

(Fossilized ammonite mollusk. Photo by Adrien Vieriu)

Calvino fa la conchiglia

[Calvino/Italo Calvino
makes/does/imitates
a/the
seashell/shell/spirals]

La costruzione di uno scrittore

[The making/building/construction of a writer]

Editor’s note: To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italo Calvino on October 15, 2023, the journal California Italian Studies has published a special issue, edited by Anna Botta and Lucia Re, titled...

10 Questions for KT Herr

October 18, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

      while we yellowed    in the pale strobes
                                                                   rumors began to arrive
   of a wide floor    blown open
                                   ...

Unwavering Clarity of Purpose

October 13, 2023 - By Mary Bombardier

(Juanita Morrow Nelson. Photo by Ed Hedemann, 2010)

I've been thinking of Juanita Nelson lately. What would she think of the state of the world right now, our relationships to the earth, to one another. What would she say about how we are living?

Juanita was one of the few people I’ve met in my life who truly lived her values. Fill in the latest buzzword for community engagement and social justice work—relational, transformational, liberatory—she embodied it. She embodied these principles with ease because they were part of everything she did. And she did it without the ego and arrogance that can often consume those of us who strive to be authentically part of social justice movements.

Over the past thirty years, I have worked at the intersection...