The View from the Fire Escape: Notes on Urban Solitude
A personal essay on the strange intimacy of city living — the way overheard conversations, distant sirens, and the glow of a neighbor's window become the texture of our inner lives.
Latest
A Brief History of Silence
From the monastic traditions of the Middle Ages to the quiet rooms of contemporary therapy, silence has been many things: a discipline, a punishment, a refuge. What are its meanings now?
Two Poems
New poems from the author of The Cartography of Rain, exploring the borderlands between grief and wonder, and the strange mathematics of love.
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Weather
Climate change has transformed small talk into existential reckoning. A cultural history of our most mundane obsession, from ancient agricultures to the age of anxious forecasts.
Terminal B: A Story
Fiction: In the fluorescent purgatory of an international airport, two strangers meet between flights and discover that the only thing more uncertain than the departure board is the shape of the life waiting for them on the other side.
Current Issue — Summer 2026
Issue No. 47: The Edge of Things
Featuring new fiction by Rachel Kim and Andre Dubus III, poetry from Mary Oliver's archives, essays on climate grief and the future of democracy, and a portfolio of photographs from the borderlands of Eastern Europe.
Browse the Issue