An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.

  • On World-Building: Lessons From a Martyred Teacher

    On World-Building: Lessons From a Martyred Teacher

    Bayan Haddad once taught literature to Oudeh Hathaleen, who would become a teacher himself, as well as Palestinian community advocate and consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. In July, Oudeh was murdered by an Israeli settler. Haddad reflects on the lessons taught by colonial violence.

  • We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS]
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    We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS]

    Three new short stories by Luke O’Neil—”The rules,” “How to live,” and “Something that was once potentially good”—are excerpted here from his new book of stories, We Had it Coming, out from OR Books.

  • On World-Building: Lessons From a Martyred Teacher

    On World-Building: Lessons From a Martyred Teacher

    Bayan Haddad once taught literature to Oudeh Hathaleen, who would become a teacher himself, as well as Palestinian community advocate and consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. In July, Oudeh was murdered by an Israeli settler. Haddad reflects on the lessons taught by colonial violence.

  • We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS]
    ,

    We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS]

    Three new short stories by Luke O’Neil—”The rules,” “How to live,” and “Something that was once potentially good”—are excerpted here from his new book of stories, We Had it Coming, out from OR Books.

  • An image of Shepherd's Field near Beit Sahour, West Bank, Palestine. "Shepherd's Field near Beit Sahour, West Bank" by Daniel Case is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

    Two Poems

    In honor of last week’s reading, we’re thrilled to present two poems by Mejdulene Bernard Shomali that narrate the precarity of Palestinian American safety and satirize the absurd lexical tactics western media deploys to justify genocide.

  • An image of the Jordan River's coast. "The Dead Sea, Jordan bank." by jemasmith is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

    Two Poems

    In anticipation of our upcoming reading and conversation, we’re thrilled to present two new poems by George Abraham on Palestinian resistance, queer rage, and writing through the wreckage of US empire: “Poems,” they conclude, “useless as Americans.”

  • Hyperpolitics? Yes, Please

    Alex Colston reviews Anton Jäger’s “Hyperpolitics,” filling in gaps in the book’s short argument and arguing for the importance of political formations and activities independent of official political society.

  • The Same Battle, Again

    A.C. Corey unpacks the misguided revolutionary and cinematic hopes pinned on Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another”—each an expression of left melancholia and mania, of political and cultural restlessness, of the fantasy of resolution.

  • The Workplace Arms Race

    Shane Boyle reviews Craig Gent’s Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management. “Rather than representing a step towards scientific perfection, algorithmic management is simply the latest episode in capital’s interminable struggle to subjugate labor.”

  • Horizons of Youth Liberation

    Sarah Brouillette reviews Madeline Lane-McKinley’s newest book, Solidarity With Children, from Haymarket. Lane-McKinley’s text conceptualizes the full scale of injustice perpetrated against children worldwide. By invoking Marxist-feminist theory, interpreting cultural texts, and critiquing sociopolitical conditions, Lane-McKinley surveys the horizons of a world in which children are no longer regarded as…

  • A History of Violence

    Noah Kulwin reviews Seth Harp’s new book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” tracing the historical continuities between Vietnam War-era drug smuggling operations and the overwhelming present-day criminality taking place at the Fort.

  • Incendiary Schemes

    Charlotte Rosen reviews Bench Ansfield’s new book, Born in Flames—a stunning and revelatory analysis of the systematic, profitable, and deadly arson schemes that were perpetrated by landlords and insurance companies in the Bronx during the 1970s.

  • Health Sovereignty in Palestine: A Conversation Between Mary Turfah and Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah

    In this long conversation, Mary Turfah talks with Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah about health sovereignty in Palestine, the coloniality of Western NGOs, the centrality of healthcare to the genocide in Palestine, and much more.

  • Anti-Convention: Richard Hell on Godlike

    Richard Hell’s novel Godlike has just been re-released with a new afterword by New York Review Books. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory as a novelist and street poet, the sometimes-guiding examples of Rimbaud and (Tom) Verlaine, various noms de plume, the New York School poets, and his fearlessness of influence.

  • Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos

    In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the possibility of a just climate transition, and more.

  • Victor Serge, Turncoat Radical?

    Andrew Holter interviews Mitchell Abidor on Abidor’s new book, Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, out from Pluto Press. “It seems like we in the English-speaking world, at least, have misunderstood some pretty important things about him”—including what Abidor argues was his late-life turn to reactionary anti-communism.

  • People Without Exception: An Interview With Divya Dwivedi

    Dialogue with the revolutionary philosopher Divya Dwivedi is never a neutral interaction. As we spoke with Dwivedi, she was facing death threats on social media platforms, including of threats of decapitation and calls for funding assassins. Concurrently, two prominent English-language Indian media outlets, India Today and News18, published articles depicting Dwivedi and her associates as…