Sarah Stewart Johnson. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Sarah Stewart Johnson grew up in Kentucky before becoming a planetary scientist. She now runs a research lab as a professor at Georgetown and works on NASA missions. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Her book, The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World, was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2020.

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An excerpt from The Sirens of Mars:

Mars, after all, is only our first step into the vast, dark night. New technologies are paving the way for life-detection missions to the far reaches of our solar system, to the moons of the outer planets, far from what we once considered the “habitable zone.” To worlds that hold stacks of oceans amidst shells of ice, floating like a layer cake. That spew out jets of briny water through cryovolcanoes. That have pale hills and dark rivers and hydrocarbon rain. And then there are also the planets around other stars. There could be as many as forty billion planets that could support life in the Milky Way alone, belted with moons and moonlets—potentially an entire solar system for every person on Earth. The idea of knowing these places intimately, of one day touching their surfaces, may seem ludicrous. The universe has a speed limit—it’s slow, and these worlds are very far away. What could we ever know about them, besides a few details about their orbits, perhaps some spectrographic measurements of their atmospheres? They are points of light and shadow at the very edge of our sight, far beyond our grasp. Then again, that is exactly how Mars seemed only a century ago. Read More

Marwa Helal. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), Ante body (Nightboat Books, forthcoming 2022), and winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest. She is also the author of the chapbook I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2017) and has been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, NYFA/NYSCA, Poets House, and Cave Canem, among others. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Two poems from Invasive species:

“poem to be read from right to left”

language first my learned i
second
see see
for mistaken am i native
go i everywhere
*moon and sun to
ل letter the like
lamb like sound
fox like think but Read More

Donnetta Lavinia Grays. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Donnetta Lavinia Grays is a Brooklyn-based playwright who proudly hails from Columbia, SC. Her plays include Where We Stand, Warriors Don’t Cry, Last Night and the Night Before, Laid to Rest, The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition, The New Normal, and The Cowboy is Dying. Donnetta is a Lucille Lortel, Drama League, and AUDELCO Award Nominee. She is the recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwright Award, National Theater Conference Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, the Lilly Award, Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award, and is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. She is currently under commission from Steppenwolf, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, WP Theater, and True Love Productions.

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An excerpt from Where We Stand:

Eyes widen as we walk the streets of this shiny unfamiliar. And Ohhs and so many Ahhs.

What’s that moment when your spirit finally sees what your children see in you? Hero. Protector. Smartest person in the room. And that wealth of responsibility and expectation washes over you … in fear. I never knew I could be as big as y’all imagined me to be. We walked the length of this town like to have all y’alls hope pressed into my chest. A hope we didn’t think possible.

A still could be?
A better than?

WE DIDN’T KNOW Read More

Tope Folarin. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Tope Folarin is a Nigerian American writer based in Washington, DC. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also named to the 2019 Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. A Particular Kind of Black Man is his first book.

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An excerpt from A Particular Kind of Black Man:

Tayo and I learned early on that all junkyards are basically the same. Dad had been taking us to junkyards all over Utah since we were toddlers, and we’d grown accustomed to the sights. At the front of the entire mess is a shack that’s supposed to serve as an entryway, checkout counter, and, depending on the whims of the owner, a bar as well. Inside the shack there are car parts strewn all over the place: exhaust pipes on the counter, alternators and radiators spread across the floor, license plates everywhere. At the back of the shack there’s a door that leads to the junkyard, a gate to another land.

For each junkyard is like an unexplored planet. The terrain is always unfamiliar; the air barely breathable. There are craters everywhere, and my father moves forward carefully, scouting the path ahead before calling back telling us it’s okay to follow. Every junkyard looks like the site of a massive industrial explosion, the secret innards of various contraptions laid out for us to see, while we roam about like postapocalyptic scavengers searching for the parts that will make our dying car go. Read More

Steven Dunn. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Steven Dunn, aka Pot Hole (cuz he’s deep in these streets) is the author of two novels from Tarpaulin Sky Press: Potted Meat (2016) and water & power (2018). Potted Meat was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and shortlisted for Granta Magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists, and adapted to a short film by Foothills Productions. The Usual Route has played at L.A. International Film Festival, Houston International Film Festival, and others. He was born and raised in West Virginia, and teaches in the M.F.A. programs at Regis University and Cornell College.

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An excerpt from Potted Meat:

LOSE A TURN

Grandma thinks I’m her husband again. He died before I was born. She says to me, Remember when you came home from the mines all dirty and took me dancin. Yeah, I say, we had big fun. And that one gal, she says, whats her name, you know, that slew-footed heffa, the one starin at you. Aw cmon now, I say, that was nuthin, you know I only got eyes for you.

Grandma slips back in. She says, Boy, you wash them dishes yet. I was just about to, I say. Well what you waitin on. She changes the channel to Wheel of Fortune and solves a puzzle before I do, and before the people on the show do. Them some slow-ass folks on that show, she says. A commercial comes on. She looks at me. That was a real nice date, huh, dontcha remember. Read More

Jordan E. Cooper. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Jordan E. Cooper is an OBIE Award–winning playwright and performer who was most recently chosen to be one of OUT Magazine’s “Entertainer of the Year.” Last spring he had a sold out run of his play Ain’t No Mo’, a New York Times Critics Pick. Jordan created a pandemic-centered short film called “Mama Got A Cough” that’s been featured in National Geographic and was named “Best of 2020” by the New York Times. He is currently filming The Ms. Pat Show, an R-rated “old school” sitcom he created for BET+, which will debut later this year. He can also be seen as “Tyrone” in the final season of FX’s Pose.

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An excerpt from Ain’t No Mo’:

ZAMATA: Free?

WOMAN: (To TV) Bitch said free.

ZAMATA: What free?

WOMAN: (To TV) What country?

NEWSWOMAN: Land of the free.

WOMAN: (To TV) What free?

ZAMATA: What land?

NEWSWOMAN: This land. Read More