ISSUES | fall 2026

Searching for Life   The writers in this issues find authenticity in ways that remind me of Stoic or existential thought. They speak of acting on one’s own, finding meaning…    read more

Di Nwanne’m    Your brother’s name is Mezie.   When your older brothers, Idi and Abuchi, fight over who ate the last piece of cocoyam or whose turn it is to…    read more

Sonnet for Lost Symptoms The morning my pregnancy symptoms stopped, I dreamt I held our long-dead dog, broken in my arms. In place of headstrong cancer, which claimed him piecemeal…    read more

A House in the Woods   Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 2013  Little house in the woods. The phrase is so pastoral it almost yawns. But that’s what it turns out to be: two…    read more

Stump  All around downtown Portland, Oregon, pigeons died and more were born. Every hour. Shell-cracking births in the dank crooks of underpasses; grisly deaths under the wheel of a car…    read more

The Dissident Above the roofs at dawn, the flags are flying. Downstairs, soiled lives go on in the laundromat. And in newspapers, people keep vaguely dying in ten-point font while…    read more

Hill Station    “Arjun!” cries Betha. Two boys come running out of a doorway at them.  Betha is wearing a dusty dress. In her hand is a bottle of oil,…    read more

No Anguish in This House  I found Glen on a dating site called Green Singles. It was 2002 and Green Singles was one of the first dating sites that appeared…    read more

Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Her first collection of…    read more

Post-Traumatic Arthritis  Late evenings, when February asphalt whispers the cold afterthought of winter, nobody calls with good news. A year of un- and mis- diagnoses homologize into low MRI hums,…    read more

The Prepared Actor    Every analog has its own, correlating analog. Tap into the prime analog and you tap into the prime truth.  From The Process, Chapter 1    From…    read more

My Search for Life  In a giant metal tank colder than nightfall on the moon, the seeds of human life lie in wait. Liquid nitrogen keeps them frozen in time.…    read more

The Human Future: From Symbiosis to Transcendence    Bacteria to AI by N. Katherine Hayles. University of Chicago Press, 2025, 304 pp., $27.50 (paperback).    Alien Earths by Lisa Kaltenegger.…    read more

How to Live: William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement  I have always felt that your work comes from the sheer delight of making beautiful things—that no alien motive…    read more