““Yeah, dogsleds,” I mutter to no one. “Gotta hit the head.” No one seems to notice. The rest of my current table is still intent on Mikael’s tale, which appears to be as endless as the snowy expanse he was lost in. Or at least they are all still pretending to be listening, eager…(Read More)

“The sky has become a bruised pink-blue-purple. It is late June in Oulu in northern Finland, and Midsummer, the longest day of the year, has only just passed. In my husband’s hometown, sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle, the longest day of the year is long. ” Writing about Finland is one…(Read More)

“A highlight of the month of December for my sisters and me, growing up in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, was a trip downtown to breathe in the smoky caramel scent of chestnuts roasting on the tiny pushcarts of bundled-up street vendors, hear the jingling bells of Salvation Army Santas along…(Read More)

She was gracious, nonetheless, inviting me to take shelter under her parasol. I sat. She ordered me a lemonáda. For the next few weeks during that hot confusing summer, many years ago, this became our routine. To read the rest of this personal essay, “Lemonáda,” about a summer I spent in Greece during…(Read More)

“Just follow.” He took off, pushing the larger ferns from his face. There were two paths to choose from, both signposted but neither marked with a destination he recognized. Why not just write “Summit”? Or “Top”? Or the equivalent in Spanish, with altitude noted? The top was where everyone wanted to go. To read the…(Read More)

“It means being able to see the forest for the trees, while still knowing the sound of the wind through their branches in deep winter, the color of their leaves in autumn, their smell in early spring. It means being able to recognize the universal that will make a story meaningful to others, while retaining…(Read More)

“From the day Jane walked out our front door — taking everything of value she could stuff in her car, except our seven-year-old daughter, Shoshana — the ferrets began appearing in our backyard. Every evening, they would creep through the straggling peonies and rustle the black-spotted old-fashioned roses. Before long, once night fell…(Read More)

“During the night, a friend has sent a poem she wrote about an island off of an island we visited together. For a few moments I am there again, feeling the pooling light on my wet shoulders and tasting salt in my mouth. “But I am not on that island. I’m in landlocked Switzerland…(Read More)

“Following the successive deaths of all four of their children, aged from 12 days to 11 years old, between 1880 and 1890, financier Spencer and writer Katrina Trask in 1900 bequeathed the near entirety of their considerable fortune toward establishing an artists’ retreat on their rambling estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. “Since God in…(Read More)

“In March, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi became a 2018 recipient of the $165,000 Windham Campbell Prize, one of the world’s most generous writing awards. Five years ago, when the Ugandan-born author completed her doctoral thesis, the novel Kintu, at the University of Lancaster in the U.K., she was unable to find a…(Read More)