The PEN Ten with Domenica Ruta

I don’t care about fashion. Great minds paired with enormous hearts will always transcend fashion, no problem. The public intellectuals who are to remain vital will have to be… More

Witch

Once, deep into his illness, my father stumbled into my room and saw me painting him and Mother. He saw the black animal I had drawn in place of… More

The PEN Ten with Alissa Nutting

"I think writing should be a sacrifice, and feel like one—how else could the act of constructing narratives, stories, lies, deceptions, ever be kept honest, if not through demanding… More

Another Door

It’s simple enough to completely plow me over. / Some static in the radio’s belly, a sandwich / aglow in an empty room, love letters without / margins, and… More

The Girl on a Leash

Her mother’s flaky hands scraped against her daughter’s forehead. Once they had been like candle wax. She said, “Are we wrong?” Her father said, “Do you want to raise… More

The PEN Ten with Richard Nash

I'd beg the imprisoned writer to try to remember her teenaged self. The intensity, the outrage, the sentiment, the naïveté, the resentment, the joy. More