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Government

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Run Home

Long-distance running is the dogged refusal to bend to the way you feel. It is the accommodation of pain. If you run long enough, far enough, fast enough, you will carve out a place in yourself where pain can live.

By Margo Steines July 2023
The Dog-Eared Page

Quiet, Please

Gordon Hempton On The Search For Silence In A Noisy World

We must recognize that we’ve largely lost quiet, even in our most pristine, natural places. But we can still choose to value quiet more as a culture.

By Leslee Goodman July 2023
The Dog-Eared Page

Some Thoughts On Mercy

When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen.

By Ross Gay May 2023
The Sun Interview

Don’t Panic

Rebecca Priestley On Finding Hope Amid The Climate Crisis

I’m not talking about burning the system down. . . . I simply think that the things we can do to respond to climate change will also make the world a better place for most people.

By Dash Lewis May 2023
Fiction

Sound Art

Outside the airport he saw a white girl with dreads in a T-shirt with the Rising Phoenix logo — a bird with wings on fire. She’d even written his name with a Sharpie on a piece of paper, along with the word Media, which is what he’d claimed to be.

By Katya Apekina April 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Dissent

The protesters were quite something to watch. On Zoom calls I would describe them to a friend in Brooklyn, who kept calling this the Summer of Discontent. What is happening to us does not have a name yet, I wanted to say. But it did not matter. The protesters were beautiful and bold, like revolutionaries.

By Kéchi Nne Nomu March 2023
The Sun Interview

Unsheltered

Eric Tars On The Human Right To Housing

The Martin v. Boise decision stands for the very simple principle that punishing a homeless person for undertaking basic, life-sustaining activities like sleeping or sheltering themselves — when there’s no adequate alternative accessible to them — is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

By Thacher Schmid January 2023
Photography

On The Streets Of San Francisco

Most days, within a block of my house in San Francisco, I’ll encounter someone who is unhoused. Since 2011 I have befriended and photographed unhoused people, and the experience has changed me in a way I never would have imagined. . . . One man said to me, “Most people see us as drunks, but you talk to us and see our humanity.” This is what I hope my photographs convey.

Text And Photographs By Joseph Johnston January 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

An Aspect Of Freedom

What is it about a traffic stop and a city block and a sidewalk and a country road and a Bible study and a choir room and a vestibule and a playground and a living room and a bedroom and a bed and a driveway and a highway and a stairwell and a gas station and a suburb and a driver’s seat and a parking lot and a balcony and the door to one’s own home.

By Ama Codjoe December 2022
Readers Write

Anniversaries

Of a fifty-year marriage, of an immigrant’s journey, of a terrorist attack

By Our Readers December 2022