Photographs from Syria and Palestine.

Decomposition does not happen in isolation. You cannot decompose alone.

Instead, I presented: One large mason jar (32oz) filled with ashes—the remains of my “Morning Pages.” The lid was screwed on tightly, a white label featuring my best penmanship: “RIP Father Figures.”

“I wondered if I was the one who had taken a funny turn. One can take a turn for the worse or the better. But taking a “funny turn” is ambiguous and enigmatic. I wondered what the original Italian phrasing was for this.”

I suppose in every discipline, the threat of artistic integrity being tainted by money is inescapable. I’ve been thinking about this alongside something…about how the imagination is not free, and there is no version of it that exists in a vacuum, untouched by the hierarchical structures of society.

I thought about the elements of a thriller, as a genre: danger, death, uncertainty, violence, crime, corruption. Certainly all of these things are in the ether as we speak; and suspense, well, we are all undeniably suspended in some way right now.

I made everything beautiful
And it didn’t make a difference
You still cried in the morning

For Piper, race was always a conscious affiliation, not an essentialist identity. […] Throughout all of this, Piper seems to have organically arrived at an understanding of race that aligns with its actual definition—a social construct rather than a biological fact.

Yoojin talks with Epiphany EIC about writing during a pandemic, the similarities between working on a draft and being pregnant, and how our professional lives intertwine with our personal lives.