In this immersive piece for  Outside ,  Mark Sundeen  writes about his  last two decades spent living in a trailer in Moab , Utah. An English major from San Francisco, when he first arrives in the “sweltering hamlet” Sundeen finds himself in awe of the rugged characters he meets. Ashamed of his own bookishness, he seeks to hide it and emulate their qualities, to become  “the sort of man who is competent with chains and repairs, rough roads and icy curves.” He also finds himself drawn to the new type of women he meets, none more so than  Wendy. Sundeen develops an obsession for the former rancher that lasts for years, to the detriment of other relationships. Sundeen describes his romantic history with great self-awareness, painting a vivid picture of the women in his life, as well as the arid atmosphere of the Moab desert that forms a backdrop to his personal development. The upshot of seeing Wendy was that when I moved back to Moab in that summer of ...

  ALASKA, UNITED STATES - 1994/01/01: USA, Alaska, Inside Passage, Skagway, Main Street. (Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images) At  Columbia Journalism Review , Lauren Harrisreports on the gritty determination of Melinda Munson and Gretchen Wehmhoff, a duo who became the owners of the  Skagway News  in a give-away. The pair, who are taking the paper into the modern age, are  committed to making the publication a success  — despite the effects of Covid-19 on a tourist town dependent on visiting cruise ships to survive. IN 2019, LARRY PERSILY, owner of the Skagway News, announced that he would give away his local Alaskan publication to a person or a pair demonstrating journalistic skill, self-motivation, grit, and—above all—affectionate dedication to the quirks and quiddities of rural small-town reporting. National news outlets picked up the story as a sort of lark, emphasizing the remote and small-town nature of Skagway, the rarity of ...

  “We Can’t Rush This Kind of Power”: An Educator on Teaching Poetry to High Schoolers During the Pandemic During this period of remote learning during the pandemic, poet and educator Paola Capó-García decided to reimagine her senior English class into a more immersive and focused eight-week poetry course. Through poems, she thought, perhaps her teenage students could reflect on “the particular chaos of 2020” and begin to process the loss they’d experienced over the year. In a piece at  Teachers & Writers Magazine , Capó-García recounts this special time spent with her students, and  how she created a safe, quiet space for them to think, to write, and to heal . Poetry is so often neglected at the high school level, deemed too difficult, too precious, or too esoteric to tackle. And when it is taught, it’s typically filtered through dead white men. But teaching Whitman and Frost does not fit into my politics as a teacher and human, and it certainly does n...

  This week, we’re sharing stories from Breai Mason-Campbell, Simon J. Levien, Paola Capó-García, Emma Gilchrist, and Liam Boylan-Pett. This week, we’re sharing stories from Breai Mason-Campbell, Simon J. Levien, Paola Capó-García, Emma Gilchrist, and Liam Boylan-Pett. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. 1. Seeing in the Dark Breai Mason-Campbell | Pipe Wrench | April 13, 2021 | 5,129 words “I have to wear all of these dolls, you see, so that Whiteness does not have to wear any.” 2. The Crimson Klan Simon J. Levien | The Harvard Crimson | March 25, 2021 | 4616 words Exploring the history of the Ku Klux Klan’s presence at Harvard University. 3. Making Sense Of It All: High School Poetry in the Age of Zoom Paola Capó-García | Teachers & Writers Magazine | April 5, 2021 | 2,260 words “I believe that one of our most important roles as teachers is to provide authentic opportunities for young people to heal.” 4. Genetic Mapping Emma Gilchrist | Maisonneuve |...