Kai Conradi shouldered the sky and looked down. The land expanded, color rushing in, taking on the contours of a relief map. Then, a strip of sand appeared, sea on […]
Books & Poetry
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
Indie Reads: Substack Edition
What’s keeping our staff and contributors glued to their inboxes
For this installment of Indie Reads, we asked Independent staff and contributors to write about some of their favorite Substack email newsletters. The mix we received includes a running invitation […]
BOOKS
Transgender Medicine’s History at a Moment of Crisis
A timely new book sheds light on the study of human sexuality
The official policy of the Trump administration is essentially that transgender citizens do not exist and will not be recognized by the federal government. The publication last month by the […]
INTERPRETATION
A Poet and Translator Celebrates ‘Life Cropping Up’
FAWC fellow Lucas Martínez uses folk traditions and language as his subjects
Lucas Martínez arrived in Provincetown with two instruments: a charango, which is a small Andean guitar, and a classical guitar, on which he practices milonga folk songs. As a writing […]
SMALL TALK
Acie Clark Finds Poetry in Everything and Anything
Striving to make honest poems, even if they’re not true
Acie Clark is interested in small talk. Most of the time, he says, people refer to it dismissively. But he finds meaning in life’s mundane moments. “So much of our […]
FICTION
Annuities
Every day, I read about the death of someone I never knew existed. On the front page today there’s an obituary about an author and activist who left an indelible mark […]
UGLY TRUTHS
Young Writer Seeks Difficulty
FAWC fellow Jiaqi Kang isn’t afraid to write willfully
Jiaqi Kang doesn’t like to call their longtime habit — waking in the morning and scribbling recollections of dreams — a “practice,” because that word is “hoity-toity.” But one morning […]
POETRY
Old Saybrook Beach
For Zahra
You waited for me before you knew my name. Until I was held in that wash of sunshine, which lent us its final beams before sailing south for winter. Wind […]
ON THE PAGE
The Music of Language
A poet brings the past, both personal and political, out of the shadows
Martha Collins’s haunting, intimate poems are a form of conversation with readers on subjects as varied as her family history, racism, politics, and, most essentially, the poet herself, “the body […]
BIG PICTURE
Reflections in the Badlands
A chance encounter with a Townsend’s solitaire
The Townsend’s Solitaire defends two worlds — the juniper grove and its reflection. Endlessly he sings on the sill between. That first winter after my brother died unexpectedly in fall […]
POETRY
First Rain at the New House
Comes at night as if from a great distance muffled, like one half asleep. Last year we slept under skylights close to the weather. It rained last night I say. […]
POETRY
Sal’s
They are older, seated in the corner. It is warm and amber in the small room. The busy waiter signals with his hand — one minute! — and they nod […]
POETRY
The Glorious First
In Britain, Aug. 12, “the Glorious Twelfth,” marks the start of the red-grouse-shooting season. In Eastham, Nov. 1 marks the start of the recreational oyster-gathering season. “Shooting-box”: a small country […]
POETRY
The Bear
My aggressive hunger for something that I wanted appeared in a dream as a huge brown bear, […]
FICTION
What We Carry With Us
Phone. Wallet. Keys. A modicum of dignity. An ocean of guilt. For me, the humiliation of Bobby Chandler beating me up in fourth grade. For her, a grandmother’s dictum that […]
