What do we do when there are whole cities full of ghosts, each one with their own unique story to tell, each one with something left undone?
Colin Dickey
Posted inStory
The Cabin on the Mountain
“Sometimes, the mechanism of the answer is something ludicrously complex, a thing that must be pieced out bit by bit. Other times, the solution requires retooling your perspective.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, History, Nonfiction, Story
The Corpse Rider
“I could see the ghosts,” recalled Lafcadio Hearn about his early childhood. Late in life, he became a celebrated chronicler of Japan’s folk tales: stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: ‘The Basket Isn’t a Metaphor, It’s an Example’
The editors of “Shapes of Native Nonfiction” talk about the craft of writing, the politics of metaphor, and resisting the exploitation of trauma.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Two Clocks, Running Down
In “Time Is a Thing the Body Moves Through,” T Fleischmann resists metaphor, even as they reflect on the metaphor-saturated work of Félix González-Torres.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
The Leaves, They Never Stop Falling
Colin Dickey remembers a departed friend and a tree that won’t die.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
American Sphinx
Civil War monuments in the North erased an emancipated Black population. But the Sphinx looked to a new world: an integrated Africa and America.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction
American Sphinx
Civil War monuments in the North erased an emancipated Black population. But the Sphinx looked to a new world: an integrated Africa and America.
Posted inCurrent Events, Story
The Elements of Bureaucratic Style
The bureaucratic voice presents governments and corporations as placid, apologetic, and unmovable. It also makes their victims as active as possible.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
Building In the Shadow of Our Own Destruction
Those who would build enormous structures—skyscrapers, bridges, border walls—should do so with an eye toward their eventual ruin.