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My Worst Best Friend
Photo by Daniela Vladimirova, via Flickr I had no friend quite like Ed. We also hated each other. He was with me all the time. He knew all my secrets. When I was in high school, all I wanted was to be...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Free Speech
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | March-April 2015: Free Speech The massacre of twelve people at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo provoked outrage around the...
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A Half-Sentence
The Church of S. Giovanni Battista in Tiedoli. The musty aroma of mushrooms was everywhere. It was the Fiera del Fungo, a festival of porcini mushrooms held every year in the northern mountain town of...
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Strays: Street People and Their Dogs
I first noticed them in Paris: dogs accompanying homeless street people. I saw a man in a heavy winter coat sitting on the stone ground of a bridge while his dog—a rust-colored lab puppy—rested,...
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Cold Peace
Twelfth of July, Donegall Street, Belfast, 2013. Dominic Bryan, via Flickr A few years ago, I found myself in a very Protestant part of Belfast trying to convince neighborhood kids that they should be...
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Lost and Found: A Conversation with Writer Philip Connors
Earlier this year, forest-fire lookout and nonfiction writer Philip Connors came out with his third book, All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found. It’s a beautifully wrought memoir about his...
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Unearthing Another War
Separatist fighters survey the steppe after recapturing Saur-Mogila from Ukrainian forces. In the frigid autumn sunlight I climbed the stone steps of Saur-Mogila. The burial mound, located atop a bluff...
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Halva with Tea
It’s a small coffee shop, a Shingle-style shack with blue trim, listed by Yelp as one of Laguna Beach’s best. Cookies and biscotti lie in a basket in front of the order window. The barista, an upbeat...
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Choosing What to Trade
“H ey, Ching-Chong. Bus fee.” The driver’s words slapped me across the face. I handed him some money and waited for my change. Everyone on the bus was silent, watching. “Here you go, Chong-Chong,” he...
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Only Poor People Take the Bus
Hopewell-Mann is a predominantly Latino neighborhood in the predominantly Latino city of Santa Fe. Close enough to downtown to make it a short commute, yet a world away so that tourism doesn’t quite...
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Failing Grades
Photo by Patrick Emerson, via Flickr Man, I don’t know any of this stuff!” It was Lamar, one of my fifth-grade students. He and his classmates were taking a reading assessment. Within minutes, Lamar...
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Human Subjects
Photo by Amy, via Flickr In 2013 I moved to Ndola, a city in northern Zambia, to work on an HIV research project. Ndola is the hub of the country’s copper mining industry, a bustling commercial center...
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Ghost Lives
The city of Oaxaca’s zócalo, or central plaza. M. Thierry, via Flickr “Mira!” Erika wagged a slim forefinger toward vendors, gawkers, and ice cream-smeared toddlers moving through the city of Oaxaca’s...
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Canary in the Coal Mine: A Conversation with First Nations Activist Carol Prior
Carol Prior, a key activist in a grassroots movement to stop the Carmichael mining project in Australia. Photo by Alex Bainbridge, Green Left Weekly. In Australia, a new mining megaproject threatens to...
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Collateral Damage: A Review of Helen Benedict’s Wolf Season
Wolf Season By Helen Benedict Bellevue Literary Press. 320 pages. In her latest novel Wolf Season, Helen Benedict tells the stories of three women in a small town in upstate New York coping with the...
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All Your Bases Belong to Us: A Conversation with Japanese Activist Hiroshi Inaba
More than six decades after America’s post-World War II occupation of Japan officially ended, more than 50,000 US troops remain there. Over half of them are stationed on the southern Japanese island of...
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Street Fighters
A neighborhood in central Caracas bears the marks of dueling political groups. Armored vehicles roll down the street, ringed by dozens of police in riot gear. Further down on the palm tree-lined...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Resilience
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | September 2020: Resilience The pandemic has forced everyone to reconsider how to live, survive, and cope during a time of loss, economic upheaval, and...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Frenemies
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | August-September 2014: Frenemies “Frenemies”: friends with fewer benefits. It’s often an apt term to describe our working lives, where polite interactions...
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The Poetry of Pussy Riot: A Review of Words Will Break Cement
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot By Masha Gessen Riverhead. 320 pages.Journalist Masha Gessen wrote a well-received biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin two years ago. In her...
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