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It is 5 p.m. and we are at the Beijing station, just about to get on a night train. I know that we will get to Pingyao (平遥) in Shanxi province at 5 a.m. 1,093 more words

On Tuesday morning, I was telling my best friend about going to see Neil Gaiman the day before. I told him that he talked about Terry having Alzheimer’s and I got the impression that Terry didn’t have long to live. 257 more words

For the last few months, I’ve been coaching a team through the process of generating a ton of sketch material.  While most capable comic minds can come up with a funny premise for a scene, that alone doesn’t always provide enough material. 672 more words

Here’s something I’ve noticed a lot – people want to help. People have good intentions. People want to show support. But they don’t really know… 1,806 more words

Travelling through the Tien Shan Mountains in the middle of winter with my skis and snowshoes is something really special to me. Im always in love with mountains, it gives a sense of calmness in my soul and standing on top of a mountain, I feel nearer to heaven. 741 more words

For those unfamiliar with U.S. timekeeping, we “lost an hour” of sleep last night, at least for those who slept according to clock time. Immediately after 1:59:59 in the morning, it was 3:00:00. 1,786 more words

 Before I married my husband, I told him to make sure that he was marrying me for who I was that day, and not for any future changes he hoped to have wrought in me through the “transforming” power of marriage.  812 more words

You never see your loved one’s flaws. You fall in love too quickly, in a rush of delight at finding such a person, a burst of wonder that, in all this wide and fragile world, there exists a mind just like your own. 604 more words

I’d just been down the street helping Justin. He was (shirtless) that kid in the neighborhood who was nice to everyone, so I offered to help him fix his bike. 573 more words

The fertility clinic waiting room was not what I expected. I had imagined leather couches, warm lighting, and potted plants—the kind of décor that might suggest to clients that the thousands of dollars they were spending was being directed, at least in part, to their own care and comfort. 1,252 more words

A guest post from Jennifer Berney:

When I entered my MFA program in 2003, I hoped I might be a literary success in the making. Though I had only written a handful of short stories, I imagined that a two-year writing program would provide me with the structure I needed to complete a book-length manuscript, and after that I’d have it made. 876 more words

On the morning of the 28th of January in Barangay Marigondon, Philippines, local residents discovered a mysterious shark washed up on their coastline caught in fishing nets. 742 more words

We were together the summer I listened to Cat Power and Dolly Parton. I was so sad that summer, so full of generalized anxiety and an unshakeable feeling that something horrible was about to happen- I still can’t listen to Jolene or a certain Cat Power album without wanting to cry. 430 more words

It’s late, cold and I’m drinking Jefferson’s Kentucky Bourbon Very Small Batch.  Much spice and vanilla on the nose with citrus notes everywhere–green apples and rum in there as well.   1,284 more words

Or, to put it another way:

Four takes on, ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’

‘… They were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.’ (Frederick Douglas) 2,278 more words

Albert Camus isn’t light vacation reading. He also penned the least likely passage to make it into Amsterdam’s tourism promotional materials.

When I travel, I try to pack fiction about the place I’m visiting. 2,109 more words

My friend Nathaniel Walker, who got his doctorate at Brown last spring and now teaches architectural history at the College of Charleston, has contributed this essay. 1,130 more words

Content note: this piece contains descriptions of transmisogyny, homophobic bullying and sexual assault.

Recently I read an article in the New Statesman in which the writer recounted her experience of rape, and the subsequent lack of empathy and care she experienced from the men around her. 1,142 more words

“The struggle of man against power is the act of memory against forgetting.”
-Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

I have my own personal reasons for choosing to photograph over other mediums, for believing that we must look sometimes even when we are more often compelled not to. 1,847 more words