The End of Policing took an old debate of the left—that the current policing system is systemically prejudiced and that it is up to communities, not police, to reconsider a more just system of public safety—and organized it into a comprehensive argument for mainstream America.

Despite some dapper pretension, there is a basic ridiculousness in "the person of letters" making the rounds on a game show, which, in theory, ought to be a real dignity-leech. Most of these authors seem amused to be on television, as if they can't believe that a network executive signed off on such a thing.

What helps us to endure amidst the pain and suffering and panic? I’m not sure. I’m sure it’s different for everyone. But maybe writing, for me, is a kind of prayer. Maybe art is a kind of prayer. Maybe walking. Maybe breathing. Maybe caring about something sacred to you, no matter how silly it seems to other people, is a kind of prayer. Or maybe I’m elevating something I love to give me an excuse to keep doing it.

With the closure of bookstores and in-person readings impossible, sales opportunities for small presses have largely been stymied to the point of near fatality, and the fallout is widespread.

A book or books that you once loved isn’t quite the same thing as a painful memory, but for me, rereading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman felt similarly unapproachable because it had direct ties to a past iteration of myself.

These verbal capsules contain universes—seemingly ordinary worlds that transform, as a matter of course, in unexpected and mysterious ways. A woman gets a stomachache and lays an egg. A man gives mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a seahorse and floats out to sea. I’m finding them to be perfect reading for a pandemic.

Everyone thinks they know what love is, but most have no clue. Reading hooks' works on love, you’ll likely discover, for the most part, that nobody loves you. Not your family, not your friends, not your “lover.” You also might discover that you don’t love anyone either.

It is difficult to track the speaker of Shimoda’s poems, as his work permeates the delineation between self and other. With this untethering, Shimoda creates a body of text and formal space that unites human and nonhuman aspects of the desert, embodying it as something internal.

When can I see you? we asked each other, but we really wanted to know, when can we be in the same room? When can we kiss, touch, and hold one another? How long must we emulate the sexless lives of hermits? A few more weeks, a few more months, a whole year?