Gary Waters: Illustration of woman reading book near clouds As for craft: I had arrived on campus as a sophomore in 1984 with a love for the music of T. S. Eliot, from his Practical Cats (1939) to …

What is close reading? Close reading is the practice of paying attention to a passage of text to account for at least one aspect of its meaning and to make an argument about how it works. …. There …

I’ve been dreaming, I’ve been paying dues I’m not one for the glory And …

We are not a museum, just a tiny, scruffy, neighborhood frame shop in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb known for Northwestern University and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, for its …

I was probably eleven when my father started spinning plates. He’d been watching The Ed Sullivan Show and in between Petula Clark and Sergio Franchi, there was a man, all tuxed-up, spinning fifteen…

James Perkins had just killed his goats. Forty-seven in all. But for the two bulls, every one had been born right there on his property, and even though he was a rancher and they were stock, he lov…

A daily logic puzzle where you deduce who is a criminal!

Ashvin Harrison: Tree of Optimism I live in the aftermath of cancer, the green reforestation period after the great fire, the brown high-water line drying to dust on the siding after the hundred-ye…

During normal daylight hours, I work with and for other kinds of people. Specifically, I direct a statewide community engagement program that connects Oregonians—particularly those that have been e…

One by one, the hotel guests got the look. They’d come to Cherie’s concierge desk, eyes nearly crossed, listening to the voice in their head. And when they tried to pair with Cherie, an…

Sujit Das: A Boy on the Way Nick almost hit the boy. He’d been driving down Burns Avenue on his way to teach a class about a story in which a boy is hit by a car. His mind was empty, an unfamiliar …

A daily logic puzzle where you deduce who is a criminal!

Story art: Jesse Dittmar I got a letter from the government claiming an easement on my leg. I had just moved into this house and must not have looked at the paperwork carefully. A few months later,…

Uche Okeke, Owls, From the Oja Suite, 1962, ink on paper The first time I ever saw an owl was in the backyard of our childhood home in Enugu. That afternoon, my sister Ije stood by the guava tree f…

Because no tools can be carried on the plane, I buy them at the Home Depot near his apartment and sneak into my father’s building through the Service Only entrance. Dad’s Ford has more dents. One o…

THR illustration: a reference desk in a Michigan library, 1980s, AADL.org. How do you find the life expectancy of a California condor? Google it. Or the gross national product of Morocco? Google i…