About the Work: Andrea England In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Andrea England 's work in SER Vol. 43.2. “ Self Portrait as a Wind Turbine Blade in the Midwest ” Personal geographies figure heavily in my work, and “Self Portrait as a Wind Turbine Blade in the Midwest” is no different. In 2016, wind turbines were erected on our family farm, surrounding the town w

About the Work: Ben Peled In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Ben Peled's work in SER Vol. 43.2. “ The Mathematician Presents ” Years ago, during Glenn Beck's heyday on Fox, Jon Stewart used to do a parody of his show. Donning a pair of fake glasses, he would stand at a board stabbing out lines of chalk to connect the most insanely disparate ideas. That sketch is w

Painting (The Circus Horse) (1927), Joan Miró The, Like, Fortification of Asgard So, the Norse gods built a city on the hill all gleaming and shit, but these gods weren’t exactly… apex. There were giants and whatever all over, and apparently they were badasses and could kill gods so the Aesir wanted a safe space to do god stuff. Aesir is like their club. Anyway, they were scared shitless that their city would be trashed so they jumped when some traveling smith chump b

About the Work: Kandala Singh In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Kandala Singh's work in SER Vol. 43.1. “ Four Seasons, Chicago ” This ekphrastic piece emerged while bumbling around downtown Chicago in November 2022, when the sense of living between two worlds was still fresh. I had recently moved from India to the US— in that state of transition, my senses were he

In Spain (1865), Olidon Redon Who Holds the Blade The first time Eneko fell in love, he did so from afar and with a dangerous alacrity. The year was 1850. The boy was not quite fifteen years old. Eneko lived in a Basque village on the Spanish coast not far from Bilbao. While he’d heard of the city, it was not a place he had ever visited or even hoped to visit. His was a poor fishing family and their plans only ever considered the cycles of the sea. He was sickly for much of

Sunset (1930), Paul Klee Family Portrait: Featuring a Talala, Oklahoma Sunset Bleeding across a late-July sky like a delicious headwound. Mom is still alive, riding the turn of the century’s collarbone. Dad skips dinner, to work, but we know the glow from his office’s window is a World of Warcraft raid. My brother is in the Tulsa County lockup for the night, after stealing DVDs in the garden section of Walmart. There’s a giant pool that wobbles like a mouth spilling secre

About the Work: Sarah Hare In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Sarah Hare 's work in SER Vol. 43.1. “Results of My Depression Screening Three Weeks After My Dad Died” Soon after my Dad died, I started writing down fragments about him that I wanted to process or remember. These snippets had no narrative throughline. The next spring, I read Miller and Paola’s Tell It

About the Work: Danica Li In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Danica Li 's work in SER Vol. 43.1. “Queen of Hearts, Queen of Swords” This story was based on my experience from many years ago working as a young lawyer representing a group of female dancers in a wage theft class action against a strip club. Among the dozens of cases I’ve handled before and since over

About the Work: Benjamin Grossberg In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Benjamin Grossberg 's work in SER Vol. 43.1. “My Octopus Lover Makes No Bones” My initial inspiration for this series was the 2020 documentary, My Octopus Teacher: its vivid, saturated glimpses. But when I started writing a year or so after watching it, the real quickly got left behind. My octop

Excavation (1950), Willem de Kooning That Winter I Grew Fat on love: he fried me eggs in butter—never enough butter he’d say as he baked me one more loaf of sourdough, planted raspberries on my tongue with his mouth, held out ladles brimming with apple tea brewed in cinnamon, honey to sink my lips into. More than love I’d say it was a diet of being loved. The machine of his body craned me from the sofa to the dinette. His Honda migrated me across rivers, out of the lonely wal

“To you astronauts”: A Review of Lisa Ampleman’s Mom in Space by Cici Liu Poets are star-lovers by nature. Lisa Ampleman is an astronaut. Her fourth book of poetry, Mom in Space , published by LSU in 2024, explores the rough and alien terrains of motherhood, in/fertility, God, and the cosmos. Rendering the quotidian at the level of mythos and cosmology at the level of material science, Ampleman’s newest collection blasts off in a breathtaking journey through joy and grief, g

An Interview with Holly Brickley Braulio Fonseca Braulio Fonseca: I have been investigating fiction authors incorporating some forms of non-fiction or at least some elements of truth into their narratives. What is your process? How did this novel come to be? Holly Brickley : I love your subject here. I’ve always wanted to write a rock novel because I felt that was the one new thing I could bring to the tradition—the talking about the songs. Most rock novels focus on context,

Compound Fracture  by Andrew Joseph White by Xanthippe Pack-Brown There is more to the eye than bubbling creeks and stretching mountains in Twist Creek County, West Virginia. If you squint just right to get a good view of the skeletons of coal mines and rusted over railroad spikes, you find something far more sinister than black lung. Enter Miles Abernathy, a young transgender man going into his senior year of high school, which for most kids his age, is their biggest worry,

Dancing Girl (1940), Paul Klee Today, There Has Been An Event Ms. Grubman is playing with my hair in first period Social Studies again and Lucy looks at me out of the corner of her eye, eyebrow raised. If Ms. Grubman isn’t playing with my hair, then she’s braiding Lu’s. Today, it’s me. We’re the only two with long blonde hair in the class.   We haven’t told our parents. We don’t want them to worry. Well, Lu just doesn’t want her mom and dad to go ballistic and my moms have

An Interview with Giorgio Celin    Haley Laningham Giorgio Celin currently lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. He creates vibrant works...

Two Women on the Shore (1898) | Edvard Munch Holy Appetites The first thing girls are taught about God is that a woman ate and man fell....

Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico  by Sophia Ziemer | edited by Gabriela Jauregui & Heather Cleary Navigating ways of knowing and forms...

Champagne Bottles (1933), Ilse Bing New Years There was the New Year’s Eve that began with a call from the hospital. A few hours before...

An Interview with Melissa Chalhoub Haley Laningham Melissa Chalhoub, a versatile artist blending a background in cinema and visual art,...

Sorrow (1913-23), Auguste Rodin On the Outside of Something When the couple came to lease her studio, she could see they were rich....