Dark
Light
When All Other Lights Go Out:
Wagner, Howard Shore, and the Long Road Home When I was a little boy, sitting alone in the…
To Study by the Sea
For some, the idea sounds like a dream: to study by the sea. It is for my students…
I Have a Farm in Africa
I have a farm in Africa. How ridiculous that sounds, so pompous and unnecessary. Those words bring…
Seeing and Being Seen: A Conversation with Harriet Alida Lye on her latest novel Motherclown
I interviewed Harriet Alida Lye in late May, days before the launch of her latest novel, Motherclown. Harriet…
The Lips that Smell of Spirits
Someone will emerge from beyond the dark mountains to the southeast — I wonder who. Every…
Refracted Selves: Mirrors in Literature, Culture, and the Soul
The Mirror as Threshold When I was four years old I stood in front of a…
The Image of the War Still Haunts Me
In the Spring of 1988, Saddam Hussein’s planes dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja in…
THE DICHOTOMY OF BEING
“Immigration is an act of great courage, facing unfamiliar lands with the resilience to build anew.” – Isabel…
Making the Miraculous Visible:
Shirin Abedinirad on Mirrors, Landscape, and the Art of Presence For Rowayat’s fourteenth issue, we could imagine no…
Blood, Death and Hope
In Fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, menopausal women are literally women who have reached the age of “despair.”…