The Ungrateful Stranger: Whose Story Deserves Welcome?
On a spring evening in 2016, the day after Donald Trump won a series of primaries cementing his candidacy, I stepped into a hushed auditorium in midtown Manhattan and found…
The LGBTQ+ Literary Resistance
In November 2024, PEN America released its key findings from over ten thousand documented cases of book bans that occurred in the 2023–2024 school year: Thirty-nine percent of reported books…
Defoe and the Distance to Utopia
In Defoe’s Captain Singleton, published a year later, the eponymous pirate comes back home with new notions of equality and communal property. Indeed, as Defoe teaches us, the highest ideals…
Porphyrios (whale)
Porphyrios (Greek: Πορφύριος) was a large whale that harassed and sank ships in the waters near Constantinople in the sixth century. Active for over fifty years, Porphyrios caused great concern…
International students stripped of legal status in the US are piling up wins in court
The attorney for Roy and his fellow plaintiffs, Charles Kuck, argued the government did not have legal grounds to terminate the students’ status. He speculated in court last week the…
Look for ‘Slow Flower’ Bouquets, Plants Grown without Health-Harming Chemicals Used in Overseas Operations
Flowers are so present in our lives that we almost do not see them: sheathed in paper in every market, plunked in a vase on a table in any cafe.…
‘Hellraiser’ writer Clive Barker on the publishing industry’s homophobia
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser was based on his original novel, The Hellbound Heart, and told the story of a woman who starts to kill so that her brother-in-law, who had recently…
DOGE assigns staffers to work at NLRB
where it allegedly removed sensitive data
The Brain Science of Elusive ‘Aha! Moments’
Scholars have sought to capture the elusive essence of the aha! moment for more than a century, and it is finally within our grasp. We now know where it happens…