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In this episode of the New Social Environment series hosted by the Brooklyn Rail, poets Eve L. Ewing and Andrea Faye Hart read a selection of their poems and join journalist trina reynolds-tyler to discuss how they became co-owners of Build Coffee & Books, a community-centered bookstore and coffee shop in Chicago.
Scientists studying chacma baboons in Namibia have recently reported findings that seem to demonstrate young baboons expressing feelings of jealousy, particularly in situations where they encounter their mothers grooming a younger sibling. One researcher observed a jealous baboon’s use of trickery, luring her sister away from her mother by pretending to play with her and then taking her spot in her mother’s arms. Think back to an incident in your own life when you felt jealous because attention was being paid to someone else. Write a personal essay that reflects on your emotions at the time and your relationships with each of the people involved. You might meditate on more general ideas of jealousy as well—are there possible benefits of it from an evolutionary standpoint?
In this PBS NewsHour video, Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, speaks about the efforts to support literary nonprofits, including independent publishers, residencies, and fellowships for writers.
“I sit hunched over an open folder, I peer at Lorraine Hansberry’s cursive script, neat and sharp like the thoughts in her eyes,” writes Tisa Bryant in Residual (Nightboat Books, March 2026), an experimental memoir written in the aftermath of her mother’s death in which she includes works by Black women who haunt her meditations and creative work. Bryant writes toward a “shared Black imaginary” as she moves through reflections on art, loss, and literature. Begin composing a hybrid essay that incorporates elements of memoir and criticism by first brainstorming a list of people who haunt your thinking—you might jot down writers and artists you admire, or figures from fiction and nonfiction works. Write a series of vignettes in which you explore these specters while observing how they have infiltrated your personal life. Allow yourself to delve deep into diaristic details, perhaps even adding drawings or photographs.
Founded in 2012 and now based in Minneapolis, Trio House Press publishes twelve books of poetry and nonfiction annually and aims for its titles to build empathy and understanding.
The prose writer Mandy-Suzanne Wong highlights journals that have published some of her surprising, emotive essays on mollusks including Digging Press Journal and Black Warrior Review.
While promoting her book, an author collects personal stories of shelter and storm, curating an accidental anthology that demonstrates how sharing stories fosters community during a time of climate upheaval.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Frog: And Other Essays by Anne Fadiman.
In her foreword to a reissue of Audre Lorde’s 1982 book, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography, forthcoming this month from Penguin Classics, Evie Shockley writes about Lorde’s version of writing about the self, in which mythologizing becomes a method to explain the inexplicable. Shockley writes: “What biomythography foregrounds is the way myth is central to her writing of her life, her writing for her life, her writing life, her life writing. A myth is a story that explains the nature or origins of a phenomenon—a story that often involves the supernatural.” Write a personal essay that takes inspiration from Lorde’s form and offers context to a particular event from your past by drawing from the lives and stories of people you have known, both in real life and from works of art. Does a supernatural tone arise from this incorporation of mythology to imbue your narrative with a sense of wonder?
