Nonfiction

“Alexander and Bucephalus” by Victor Adam Lemercier You’re a foot soldier in the invincible Macedonian army. You are led by a man named Alexander who may be a god. But lumbering toward you on this

Editor’s Note: This excerpt from Self-Portrait in Bloom is set in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980-1988. The Shamlous referred to here are the iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000) and

Editor’s Note: this essay was selected to appear in Pushcart Prize XLVI (2022 edition)   The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect

Once located on a spur off the coastal road between Tel Aviv and Haifa, Tantura was a fishing and agricultural village counting 1,490 residents. Attacked on May 22-23, 1948, the village fell after a brief

Abstract: Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American writer. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is 2016 Pulitzer

I end wars. When I arrive at bases and conflicts, my job is to help close them, move them, go underground. My military experiences travel the circumference of war, seldom intersecting the dangerous center of

It’s six o’clock in the morning. A beautiful, mercifully cool summer Sunday morning. The final day of the three-day Stokes Folks Family Reunion. My father’s side of the family. Father’s mother’s side to be exact.

As I was reading about the group of women in Handmaid’s Tale red robes and white bonnets who staged a pro-choice protest in the Texas senate this week on Monday, March 20th, I was thinking

1. So I found myself sitting on a bench, waiting in a wooden building at Fort Holabird, an Army base in Baltimore, Maryland. A corporal, looking glum, walked through the rows of new recruits who

Fascist. Totalitarian. Authoritarian. These words continue to appear more frequently in American and international media, amplified by the looming US 2020 election. As with many socio-political terms, such as “Left”, “Right”, “Far-Left”, “Far-Right”, “Moderate”, “Centrist”,

The name “Ku Klux Klan” apparently derived from the Greek word “Kyklos,” from which comes the English word “circle.” Klan was added for the sake of alliteration. Founded after the Civil War, the KKK spearheaded resistance to

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.—General Robert E. Lee The day ambled on until it became night. The sun went down, but its heat remained, and we continued to