Hello from your editors! We have a few pieces lined up for you for both Suicide Prevention Month and Bi Visibility Month. As for why we are not doing this in September? Well… bunch of illnesses among our editors. C’est la vie (we hope). So thank you for sticking with us through our hiatus and…
Tag: education
Sleep & the Raveled Sleeve: Mental Health Shorts
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And we decided to showcase a variety of approaches and perspectives–two memoirs followed by one work of fiction. We noticed that sleep plays a big role in all three and that is no coincidence–too little sleep or too much is such a common ingredient in a person’s mental health…
Saskia Hamilton: World Poetry Day
Saskia Hamilton (1967- 2023) was my teacher when I was a student at Columbia. She was on the faculty at Barnard, and one of the first classes I took was her Poetics, a lecture of about thirty students. A couple years later, I took her Advanced Poetry Writing seminar. Can I start by saying I…
Yentl, Tragedy, and the Unanswerable Question
“Yentl” is my favorite short story. Sort of. Let me explain. There’s a joke that the question a reader/writer hates most is also the most frequently asked: “what’s your favorite book.” Or “what’s your favorite short story?” It’s such a personal question. The answer has everything to do with who I am deep down; who…
“When the Future Appears”
Remember, the time of year when the future appears like a blank sheet of paper -Jackie Kay “Promise” “Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes…” -Rent “Seasons of Love” Theater kids, or at least theater kids of a certain age know exactly how much time that is. Maybe you know even if you weren’t…
Trans Day of Rememberance
This post about Trans Day of Remembrance comes to us from Kieryn J. McCann. You can read Kieryn’s amazing poem “Kayla Marie” here.–ed. Today, November 20th, is internationally acknowledged as Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). It is a day of collective mourning for the trans community. The first TDoR vigil was held in 1999 by…
Israel: Why it’s Hard to Write About
It’s taken me a lot of time to build up to writing this. And if I had to give a single reason, it’s because I was taught to think a certain way. That Israel is a shining democracy among (Arab, Muslim, nonwhite) dictatorships. That Israel makes every effort to minimize civilian casualties while “the other…
Against Book Bans: Mirrors and Windows
Mirrors. Windows. Lonely. Alone. Cover the mirror. Your place is clear. Close a window. So much you won’t know. Mirrors. Windows. A child needs both. Rudine Sims Bishop, the mother of multicultural children’s literature was the first to explain that, in order to get a balanced view of the world every child needs mirrors and…
SAT Students and Boundaries
One of the perils of opening our magazine up to any submission is that you occasionally get a submission like this. The author requested we withhold their name to protect their identity and the identity of their SAT students. Enjoy! -Ed. SAT Students, Boundaries, Humours You have to know your students, and you have to…
Bi+ Visibility 2023
Note: A lot of language surrounding gender is new. These words/ideas have been around for years but it’s only in the last decade or so that the singular “they” and the idea of gender as a spectrum have entered the public consciousness. You’ll see a lot of the outdated style of language in this piece,…