By U.S. State
By Country
The Politics of Lonely
by Brad Zwiers | Oct 27, 2017 | Placeless
So fall softly as you go into your places, like snow onto empty branches, like a weighted blanket.
Thoughts on the Afterlife
by Nick Meekhof | Oct 26, 2017 | Placeless
In my imagination, heaven was an infinite, celestial hay maze.
Northern Lights: A Letter to a Friend
by Jack VA | Oct 25, 2017 | Chicago
While we were talking, your mom shouted from upstairs that we should go outside—there were northern lights showing.
How to Take the GRE
by Lauren (Boersma) Harris | Oct 24, 2017 | Placeless
7. Bring vocabulary cards on road trips and try to convince people that studying them will be, just, SUCH a fun game.
Lend Me Your Ears: Podcasts
by Julia LaPlaca | Oct 23, 2017 | Placeless
For a blog written by people between the ages of twenty-three and thirty circa 2017, it’s been a while since we’ve talked about podcasts.
Communion Crusts and Tea Sandwiches
by Paula Manni | Oct 22, 2017 | Michigan
My mom’s bread pudding is tried and true comfort food: warm, spongy mush flecked with cinnamon and sprinkled with raisins.
The Gabe Gunnink Halloween Lookbook
by Gabe Gunnink | Oct 20, 2017 | Placeless
It was a costume that screamed, “No! I don’t want to join my friends in the haunted house with a crawlspace entrance, thank you very much!”
Repurposing Gravestones
by Mary Margaret Healy | Oct 19, 2017 | Placeless
For years, I swear I knew the five stages of grief and what it felt like to come through to acceptance on the other side.
Stumping for Calvin
by Ben DeVries | Oct 18, 2017 | Illinois
If nothing else then, the Illinois Regional College Fair confirmed for me what I already knew: I would make a terrible salesperson.
Harvey Weinstein and Strategic Sexual Assault
by Tony Ditta | Oct 17, 2017 | Placeless
Who did he attack? Young women at the beginning of their careers—people over whom he had the most leverage and who had the least institutional recourse.
Protest and the Church
by Andrew Knot | Oct 16, 2017 | Placeless
The first thing is that protest has a clear place in church tradition. The scriptures and church history testify to it.
On Conquering Fears
by Cassie Westrate | Oct 15, 2017 | Placeless
I am irrationally afraid of concrete horrors, like clowns and spiders and people impersonating Talking Elmo, but those veins of fear are hardly the heart of the matter.
All The World A Burden
by Will Montei | Oct 14, 2017 | Placeless
After listening my alarm blare for five, ten, or twenty bleary minutes, I started to admire whoever designed the heinous tone.
Liner Notes with Abby
by Abby Zwart | Oct 12, 2017 | Placeless
There are certain artists you just have to listen to at particular times of year.
Practical Advice for the Cursed
by Elaine Schnabel | Oct 11, 2017 | Placeless
1. Be the curse. There is an admirable and horrifying impulse in the human heart to pretend that life is okay when it is not.
Autumnal
by Jenna Griffin | Oct 10, 2017 | France
I learned to love the fall, to really love it, at the foothills of the French Alps, in October, two months after my friend drowned in Lake Michigan.
Still Hungry
by Bart Tocci | Oct 9, 2017 | Placeless
Lamb and lentils, red wine, pumpkin thing, red wine, red wine, cracker with stuff on it, red wine, sake. We stopped at Anna’s for a burrito, because no matter how good the food is, you always get hungry again.
Artprize 9: A Retrospective
by Paul Menn | Oct 8, 2017 | Grand Rapids
Before even stepping foot downtown I basically knew what art I would find where and what would be in the Top 20.
Blue Monday (A Tribute to Tom Petty)
by Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak | Oct 7, 2017 | Georgia, New York
For a moment, I wondered if I should be embarrassed. Then I remembered that loving Tom Petty is not embarrassing.
On Owning Guns
by Josh deLacy | Oct 6, 2017 | Washington
Whenever I tell people about this hunting trip, about my family’s tradition for the past ten years, I share it with a blend of defiance, pride, and defensiveness.
Figs, Deferred
by India Daniels | Oct 5, 2017 | Chicago
North Lawndale is a food desert.
Piano Hands
by Caitlin Gent | Oct 4, 2017 | Placeless
My hands are social. They will say “I love you” before my mouth is ready.
Teaching Myself to Read
by Meg Schmidt | Oct 3, 2017 | Placeless
I’m discovering that if one is to read aloud, one should pick up a murder mystery.
Settling for Less
by Carolyn Muyskens | Oct 2, 2017 | Placeless
We can understand being present by distinguishing between two types of activities we engage in on a day-to-day basis: telic and atelic activities.
I Am Not the Funny One
by Katerina Parsons | Oct 1, 2017 | Honduras
It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor—with close friends and family I joke, laugh, and make others laugh. But there’s an unshakeable earnestness to it.
The Funny One
by Laura Sheppard Song | Sep 30, 2017 | Grand Rapids
Making friends, it turns out, meant finding people I didn’t have to be funny around—those I could trust liked me even when I wasn’t confident or cracking jokes
Sunday Mornings for Apostates
by Scott Harkema | Sep 29, 2017 | Placeless
“Why weren’t you in church this morning?”
I still haven’t told her.
Bootleg Baby
by Matt Coldagelli | Sep 28, 2017 | Placeless
We’ve since come to realize that there’s no perfect way to feel while pregnant. There’s not an emotional experience you’re supposed to have.
In Search Of Our DNA
by Brad Zwiers | Sep 27, 2017 | Canada
The rupture between God and humanity is crystal clear in this one, and as the play careened toward its tragic ending, no one in the theatre was surprised.
On Tattoos
by Nick Meekhof | Sep 26, 2017 | Grand Rapids
During the hour it took to fill in the shapes of Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie, and Ontario, I learned a lot about tattoos. Apparently, no design is off-limits, so long as you can find an artist willing to draw it.
