Sharing the Darkness
Carolyn Forché
I wake with a start at midnight. A nightbird striking the window? A bat in the eaves? Maybe someone in the theater of my sleep gave me a nudge—someone I don’t know in waking life. It is cloudy and warm…
Category:Prose
Kata, a novel excerpt
Stacy Mattingly
The following is an excerpt from my novel, Kata, which tells the story of a deteriorating friendship between two women—one Croatian, one American—living in present-day Sarajevo. The American, Yancey, narrates.
Out in the courtyard, Jude gave me the milk and half a bag of espresso. It was after eight, and I still had a thirty-minute walk. I texted Kata but heard nothing back and worried I’d upset her, but then I thought, This is life. Things happen. Kata and I aren’t under the gun to see a movie by a certain time. No one has to wake up at dawn. I didn’t feel like waiting for a tram, and I wasn’t going to take a taxi on such a beautiful night. Jude walked with me to Begova Džamija. He kissed my cheeks politely near the entrance to the secret pekara …
Using Galaxy Clusters to Search for the Most Distant Objects in the Observable Universe
Dr. Felipe Andrade-Santos
On November 25, 1915, Albert Einstein published his famous theory of General Relativity, which is a geometrical representation of gravity. In this work, Einstein described how spacetime curves in the presence of energy/matter. According to the theory of General Relativity,…
Caramel and Chocolate Can Both Have Sea Salt
Gabrielle Honore
My Dad always said I had caramel skin. “A perfect combination of your mom and me.” Growing up, I never thought twice about the color dynamic within my family. To me, having a Mom and Dad that looked different from each other never struck me as strange. There have been plenty of discussions about mixed-race marriage (it took a 1967 Supreme Court ruling to make it legal. In all US states) but there is rarely any dialogue regarding the child that splits the two races: the people who bridge what is often perceived as the “privileged” and the “oppressed.” I found out for myself that to be in between these two worlds, meant my language and understanding had to change consistently and frequently. The frustrating part is, that those assumptions aren’t necessarily always from outside observers, they can also be from individuals within the group I’m trying to fit myself into. ...
Willemien’s Promise
Paula Srur Carcar
She’s sitting at her dinner table, looking out the window as the winter passes through. “I’ll take care of the snow in the morning.” It’s the last thing she remembers. It’s been a long time since she heard another person’s…
Well, What Would Lincoln Do?
John Burt
Of course, nobody really knows, and there are many reasons why. In the first place, nobody knows how Lincoln would have understood the century and half of political and social change since his own day. In the second place, Lincoln’s…
Refugee Stories from Odesa, Ukraine
Translated by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
Two Short Stories
Naomi Leites
Bucha Spring
Ksenia Rychtycka
This fictionalized short story is dedicated to the memory of Ukrainian artist and designer Liubov (Luba) Panchenko, who endured a month of isolation and starvation in her basement while her hometown of Bucha was under brutal Russian occupation. She survived the occupation, but died on April 30, 2022, when her heart gave out. During the Soviet era, her artwork was censored due to its focus on Ukrainian symbolism and folk culture. She was not allowed to exhibit or publish her work. She was a member of the Ukrainian Sixtiers dissident movement, that advocated for freedom of cultural and creative expression.