A spirograph is a tool that enables users to produce drawings of tight, interlocking spirals known to mathematicians as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. English architect Peter Hubert Desvignes first designed the tool in 1827, and by 1840, he created a version of the tool that produced designs so intricate they would help prevent banknote forgeries as […]
The power of an essay collection is often in how each piece uncovers a small truth, and together these truths blossom into greater shared revelations about life. Award-winning author and memoirist Sue William Silverman does just this in her recent essay collection, Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader (University of Nebraska Press, […]
Early in Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange, Katie Goh describes a fanciful multi-citrus tree, a single trunk bearing limes, lemons, oranges, and grapefruits, “pink, green, orange, and yellow fruit—all different species and all thriving together.” Such trees can, and do, exist, and Goh conjures this one as an object lesson in the […]
I am writing this review on a day when my dog is particularly anxious and vexing in her refusal of all efforts to assure her. Gone with the first keyed letter but there when I opened this document to begin, my Word’s new Copilot feature—included in the latest update with no regard for whether or […]
What first caught my eye about A. Kendra Greene’s No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity were those adjectives Strange and Wonderful. Juxtaposed beside two giraffes on the book’s cover, those big, bold words conjured up in me a specific type of essay collection, a collection that would feature quirky, rare animals, animals I […]
Jennifer Lang’s Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces and poses looks at the struggle of integrating into Israel, the effort it takes to sustain a long-term relationship, and the challenge of confronting oneself—even the parts we wish to ignore. The book’s experimental structure weaves yoga lessons from each of the seven chakras through seven years […]
When I was considering American University’s MFA program, it was then-student Patricia Coral who convinced me to come. You can study across genres here, she told me, which was a departure from the vast majority of programs, which did not make room for such exploration. Oftentimes writing between genres means picking one—classifying a work as […]
Christy Tending’s High Priestess of the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Disobedience brings together thirty-nine short essays on climate grief, environmental activism, and becoming a parent in fraught times. These pieces, presented in a variety of formats, range from lyrical to instructive, from reminiscent to angry. Central themes of political protest and organizing carry us on […]
Don’t read Christopher Izant’s memoir if you’re looking for answers. The author served as a marine combat advisor for a unit of the Afghan Border Police, and in the wake of Kabul’s disastrous fall in 2021, everyone has the same question: Was it worth it? “I hate that question,” Izant writes. “Most days, I just […]
In The Body Alone, Nina Lohman doesn’t shrink from the conundrum inherent in writing a memoir of chronic pain: “I need more words because none of these do the work I need them to,” she tells us. “Nothing, it seems, not my brightest words, not your sincerest empathy, communicates my inner world to your outer […]