Issue 77 / Spring 2022
77 / Resilience
We're still here
In this issue, we consider the challenges of living through collective (and too often unacknowledged) grief. How do we keep going in a time of tremendous sorrow? How do we put our experiences to good use? And how do we make room for joy and hope and laughter?
Featuring new essays about empathy training for medical students, the smell of fear in wartime, the explosive force of steam, the language of dishonesty, the tenacity of the house moth, and the necessary folly of renovating a home in fire season. Plus, advice and inspiration on staying motivated, writing about trauma, and finding creativity during a pandemic.
FEATURING WORK BY
Amye Archer, A. J. Bermudez, Caroline Hagood, Laura Pritchett, and more.
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50 Years of Making Nonfiction Creative
How all the different flavors of nonfiction transformed into a literary artRenovations
The necessary folly of rebuilding a home in a world on fireShrapnel
Writing can be a way of processing traumatic events, but it can also cause its own kind of distress. The coeditor of a book about school shootings considers the cost of "holding the pain."Punching Up
Funny women are bringing serious subjects to the stage and revolutionizing comedy—and creative nonfiction—in the processBad News 101
Empathy training helps medical students sit with uncertaintyDo I Die Today?
A pilot remembers the fear of wartime flights over the Ho Chi Minh trailMisery & Company
Celebrity funerals, social media condolences, roadside memorials, and more: tracing the history of how we experience loss—and how we share it.Behold Invisibility
The explosive force beneath New York City's steam cloudsHonest Like a Bear Attack
Things to say instead of "Please don't die."The Business of Grief
Reconsidering our responsibilities to the dead . . . and to ourselvesOngoingness
The fragile tenacity of house moths and other creaturesTiny Truths 77
Micro-essays of fleeting joys, wistful memories, and passing sadnesses from the past two years