Alexandra Watson is the executive editor of Apogee, a journal of literature and art that engages with identity politics and social justice. Published in July 2016, Issue 07 of Apogee holds poetry, nonfiction, fiction, art, and interviews majorly confronting the idea of mourning. Bound by a stunning cover of a watercolor-skinned silhouette with clear eyes, this …
As we work to bring light to the often ignored voices in literature, we must take this week to focus on a specific minority – Afghan women. Nadia Hashimi, a pediatrician of Afghan heritage, tells a fictional but absolutely realistic story of a mother accused of murdering her husband. Set in Hashimi’s parents’ homeland, A …
Americans live in a country of post-slavery, post-Civil War, post-“this water fountain is for whites only.” But we are not post-racism. Wilcox County High School in Georgia held separate “white proms” and “black proms” up until only two years ago, when the school hosted it’s first integrated prom in 2014. There are the cases of …
Dave Eggers is the founder of McSweeney’s, co-founder of 826 Valencia, and an all-around awesome writer, publisher, and philanthropist. His latest novel, Heroes of the Frontier, comes out July 26 courtesy of Knopf Publishing Group. Read an excerpt at Outside magazine. Find Heroes of the Frontier at your favorite bookstore, IndieBound, Barnes and Noble, or …
The desire to escape grounds itself in many of us, but it laid roots early in Andrew Solomon. As a Jewish child hearing stories of the Holocaust and obsessing over British fairy tales, Solomon prepared for his opportunity to get out. In his essay “Dispatches from Everywhere,” Solomon writes: I was afraid of the world. …
Part of me still couldn’t fathom that our life together was done, still believed we lived in that cramped third-floor apartment, two floors above the James Spader lookalike who held open mic poetry readings every Friday evening in his living room and once asked if you’d ever read Madame Bovary. Across the street sat the …
Partition essentially means division. In 1947, the Partition of India meant the division between India and Pakistan, the creation of a borderline. But it also meant the division between mother and child, duty and love, youth and battle scars. The 1947 partition was arguably the product of genocide and the motivator of the world’s largest …
When you think Fight Club, you think Tyler Durden. When you think Catcher in the Rye, you think Holden Caulfield. Memorable books simply have memorable characters—the ones so complex that you lose your mind right along with them. And by the end of the book you have married Holden and gone to Tyler’s funeral (before you realize …
When Grandpa died, he didn’t look like he was sleeping. He looked like he was dead. It was Wednesday, August 16th. I remember that because I circled it in purple Sharpie on my calendar. I don’t think Wednesdays are good days for dying. And purple was the wrong color to use. I should have used …