In the following essay, the author explores the apathy she finds even within herself in the face of a gradually expanding drought in Chile, the country most affected by the water crisis in Latin…
Essays
Shipping containers seen over a rainwater pond and beyond the fence that surrounds Shoreham Yards / Photo by Magali Pijpers Can healthy fruits and vegetables grow on polluted soil?…
André Leon Talley, [email protected] of Vogue backstage at Tuleh | Courtesy of Glam Media / Flickr. A poet traces fashion editor André Leon Talley’s influence on her work and life. On Janua…
Todd Anderson, I-165 Deep Field Basecamp, Allan Hills, Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica. Detail shot, 15 in. x 35 in., 10 runs, 18 colors, reductive woodcut with watercolor and pencil…
Lauren Alwan’s copy of Pictures, by David Hockney, edited by Nikos Stangos (Harry N. Abrams, 1979) A writer recalls how David Hockney inspired her, first as an art student and later…
The following essay is a memorial tribute to Olga Krause’s friend and fellow LGBT leader Sergey Shcherbakov, who died under suspicious circumstances in 1999. The text situates their friend…
Dereje Demissie (Ethiopia), Psychscape (2009) There are many things I wish to tell you about the state of African literature today, but none would be able to be contained i…
“Doctor and the Doll” by PMillera4 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Patient Message for Dr. Epstein: After an hour of pushing buttons and cursing at my keyboard, I figured out h…
The zhetygen is a stringed instrument of the peopoles of Central Asia and Kazakhstan Young Kazakh musicians are diversifying Kazakh music and putting an end to the previous…
DUE TO UNCERTAINTIES surrounding the Covid-19 delta variant, World Literature Today once again hosted the 2021 Neustadt Festival (October 25–27) as a 100 percent…
Painting was called “silent poetry.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Eager to emerge from isolation and encounter art and (safely) others, a writer in Florida takes in Van G…
China’s fifty-five officially recognized “minority peoples” make up less than 9 percent of the People’s Republic of China. Still, they number more than 130 million, and t…
Photo by Christopher Assaf Monica Brown served on the jury that chose the 2021 NSK Prize winner and successfully championed Cynthia Leitich Smith as her nominee. On the final day of the 2…
Photo by Christopher T. Assaf Let’s all take a moment to breathe in some glittering fairy dust and share a wonderful, lovely thought. Let’s contemplate the magic and power of stor…
Photo by Fowzia Karimi An Afghan American writer recalls her own departure from Afghanistan in 1980 and the weariness she observed on a 2015 visit back to Kabul. Now, having watched event…
Poet Kali Regenvanu at the market in Port Vila Vanuatu’s fortieth independence anniversary in 2020 sparked an unprecedented literary wave of new writing. Harnessing the colonizers…
Life and politics are the same on an empty plate, in a body plagued by a pandemic. But in Cuba, people are rising up and challenging the regime. Here, Cuban American poet Carlos Pintado traces t…
Photo by Se Osomajtli Tsawi For Indigenous writers like Zoque poet and activist Mikeas Sánchez, language serves as a unifying element in the struggle to defend lands and life. This essay…
Photo © by Yousef Khanfar For over 850 years, two Palestinian Muslim families have been entrusted with the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest shrine for C…
Photo © by Yousef Khanfar In the age of globalization, Western social theories, particularly those articulating the concept of feminism, seem to have taken over the world. Today the wome…
Laila Shawa, Handala / Courtesy of the artist Seventy years of Palestinian fragmentation since Israel’s creation have taken their toll. The Palestinians of today are split…
Sliman Mansour / Courtesy of the artist In memory, Aziz Shihab 1927–2007 In the late 1950s, in the middle of the United States (we lived in Ferguson, a quiet, leafy community…
Nabil Anani / Courtesy of the Artist It has been said, Wisdom descended into the hands of the Chinese, the brains of the Greeks, and the tongue of the Arabs. Palestinian writers, po…
Marie Casimir and OU School of Dance MFA student J’aime Griffith are co-choreographing and performing in I Dream of Greenwood, with dramaturgy by Professor Leslie Kraus /…
Fan Yusu from the cover of the inaugural issue of New Workers’ Literature Fan Yusu is a migrant worker from central China. She went to Beijing to work as a live-in nanny (…
