“I bet you’re a scaredy cat and wouldn’t dare go inside the house,” Rumy says, her noodle arms crossed. Kai whizzes on his new bike around us. Never set foot in the corner lot house, my Maman said eve...

Ichi, ni, san, shi… Benny’s only been a Wal-Mart stockboy a couple of weeks, part time after school, and he’s already managed to screw it up. He grinds his teeth, literally bites his tongue, listen…

My grandmother plucked seeds wherever she went—tucked them away in her black Mantou pockets like future promises. After a walk through Sadee roundabout,

Do we need a man? I want to ask her, but her eyes are bright like poppies in summer heat.

On minor characters and human possibility

If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem, argues Namwali Serpell.

WritingWorkshops.com alumna Pegah Ouji has been named a 2025 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. Celebrating her achievement and literary journey.

Joan Silber is a contemporary genius at creating artful stories of a multitude of characters who ricochet in cunning ways, crossing generations and continents. I named her 2017 novel Improvement a …

For the fourth consecutive year, PEN America's Emerging Voices Fellowship received a record number of applicants.

We had been searching, or maybe dreaming, mapping the geography of mailboxes and morning glories that sprawled like nebulas across sidewalks.

by Pegah Ouji Unlike what neighbors say about ghosts, my brother, Hameed, does not follow me everywhere. I wish he would, his lanky legs tracing the curves of Kerman’s sidewalks, disappearing, when…

By Pegah Ouji — "When Fatimah tugs at the peeling bark of a one-hundred-year-old eucalyptus tree, one jagged edge pierces her supple thumb, one drop of blood, red and round as Tehran’s setting sun str...

By Pegah Ouji — "When Fatimah tugs at the peeling bark of a one-hundred-year-old eucalyptus tree, one jagged edge pierces her supple thumb, one drop of blood, red and round as Tehran’s setting sun str...

I was helping my roommates, hanging up a pumpkin balloon for Halloween, when I got your text message saying you were in town. This was my first American Halloween away from my parents, far from Far…