Brief Encounters

Giants of the Northeast Kingdom

“Bread and Puppet was part of a Vermont I didn’t know as a kid, or only saw out of the corner of my eye.”

September 11, 2021

In the Drug Archives

“Our current fascination with psychedelics and mental exploration has a longer history than we recognize.”

September 3, 2021

On the Trail Blazed by W.E.B. Du Bois

“Writing, teaching, activism, organizing—he did everything. And I feel a responsibility, or desire, to reach as many people as I can with my writing that grows out of my interest in the Black struggle.”

August 28, 2021

The Refusal of One Decent Man

“What I have done is to continue in a tradition long hallowed among educated individuals in China by following the dictates of my conscience to speak out against tyranny.”

August 21, 2021

Advanced Hebrew with an Arabic Accent

“Struggling with the language—hating it, loving it, trying to make room for myself in it while fighting it—became essential to my work. At times, I wonder how writers can write at all in their mother tongues.”

August 14, 2021

The Writer’s Mind

“I had to find a way of mapping the swamp of stuff inside your head, which is a constantly changing representation of you plus the whole rest of the world, and how those things fit together.”

August 7, 2021

The Marvel of Comics, If Not of Movies

“However technologically wondrous, Hollywood films are less interesting to me than they’ve ever been. I never want to have to see, or have an opinion about, another superhero.”

July 31, 2021

Found in Translation

“For me, there’s my life before I learned French and my life after. Akira Mizubayashi writes that he was born in French at the age of nineteen. I feel similarly.”

July 24, 2021

Dredging Up the Ever-Living Past

“History itself is a form of storytelling. We learn about the human condition, about decency, about love, about cruelty, about all manner of matters.”

July 17, 2021

Ramblin’ Man

“I’m fascinated by the notion of storytelling as wayfinding. The compact between narrative and walking is ancient—every path tells.”

July 10, 2021