From a 2018 study commissioned by the U.S. State Department to investigate claims that an auditory weapon was being deployed against American diplomats in Cuba. The study was published in…

Read more

From Bird: Exploring the Winged World, which was published in November 2021 by Phaidon Press. The photograph originally appeared in The Budgerigar in 2014. Wild budgerigars are green. This is…

Read more

From the titles of books published since Joy of Cooking was released in 1931. The Joy of Love The Joy of Sex The Joy of Sweat The Joy of Efficiency…

Read more

From Last Letter to a Reader, an essay collection, which will be published in May by And Other Stories. I have my own way of assessing the worth of a…

Read more

From a speech published in the book El arte de la distorsión. Vásquez is the author, most recently, of the story collection Songs for the Flames. Translated from the Spanish.…

Read more

From a conversation about Afghanistan between the Iranian writers Salar Abdoh and Mohammad Hossein Jafarian, which was published in September by Guernica. salar abdoh: Do you think that America was…

Read more

From Trapped in the Present Tense, which will be published next month by Counterpoint Press. It’s possible to construct a statistical mosaic of American life out of the 332 million…

Read more

From a conversation between Olaf Scholz and two eleven-year-olds, Pauline and Romeo, who were interviewing candidates for chancellor of Germany. The exchange aired in September on Late Night Berlin. Scholz…

Read more

From an essay that appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of The Threepenny Review. Yesterday, while on extended hold with an appliance store, I deleted dead people from my Contacts.…

Read more

From Fight Night, a novel, which was published in October by Bloomsbury. Almost every day Grandma gets a call about someone she knows being dead. You can tell because she…

Read more

From prompts in 642 Things to Write About, a book distributed to seniors at Hudson High School in Hudson, Ohio. In September, after parents complained that the book asked students…

Read more

From the 2021 Red Suit Survey, which polled hundreds of professional Santas in the United States. What made you decide to be a Santa? I had the look I had…

Read more

From Issue 14 of Lana Turner. When I was almost a woman the men in the radio called someone I thought might be me an angel and a baby. I…

Read more

By an artist and inmate on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California. Spencer created this replica of his cell out of card stock and sold it on…

Read more

From The Dawn of Everything, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In the mid-twentieth century, a British anthropologist named A. M. Hocart proposed that monarchs…

Read more

From summaries of books in the library of Hernando Colón, composed by him and his staff and collected in Libro de los Epítomes. The manuscript was discovered in 2019 among…

Read more

From the website of the consultant Tony Rodrigues, who sells courses for $39.99 claiming to help customers recover suppressed memories of interactions with aliens. Rodrigues says he served first as…

Read more

From “Call of Nature,” an essay that appeared in Issue 2 of Facility: A Magazine About Bathrooms. Humans, earthbound and stuck within seemingly unbreakable systems of oppression, have long admired…

Read more

From Free, a memoir of life in Albania, which was published last month in the United Kingdom by Penguin. In 1995, my father began to practice his English with “the…

Read more

From The Perishing, which will be published this month by Counterpoint Press. My name is Sarah Shipley and I’ve slept with five women. Since I married a man, no one…

Read more

From In the Midst of Civilized Europe, which was published last month by Metropolitan Books. In the years after the Holocaust, survivors began compiling memorial books, one for each city…

Read more

From a photograph tweeted in August by Christian Climate Action of Tim Hewes, an Anglican priest, at the News Corp. offices in London. Hewes sewed his lips together to protest the…

Read more

From the website mcbroken.com, which tracks broken McDonald’s ice-cream machines across the United States. The machines break down frequently, and McDonald’s franchises are obligated to hire a certified repair person…

Read more

From a manuscript in progress. His poetry collection Howdie-Skelp will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Got up though they may be in heavy-duty gabardine they cavort…

Read more

From headlines since 2003 in the Sydney Morning Herald about Australia’s rapidly spreading population of invasive cane toads. Top End Turns into Cane Toad Heaven Invasion Spreads The City Strikes…

Read more

From On Freedom, which was published last month by Graywolf Press. Time and time again, users testify in drug literature to a sense that substances are imbued with things we…

Read more

From “A Conversation About Trees,” which appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of The Sewanee Review. I set out here to construct an argument about “nature poetry,” in order eventually…

Read more

From game play of Small Press Tycoon, a publishing industry simulation game released this year by Inpatient Press. The player begins the game with $1,000 and answers a series of…

Read more