Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”
Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.
“The Poet Is a Man Who Feigns”
Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa channeled a grand, glorious chorus of writers—heteronyms, he called them—robust inventions of his unique imagination.
The Daguerreotype’s Famous. Why Not the Calotype?
William Henry Fox Talbot’s obsession with protecting his pioneering photographic process doomed his reputation and reduced his legacy to historical footnote.
From the Black Queer South to the World
Across its twelve-year lifespan, Atlanta-based Venus magazine brought southern voices to the larger Black queer print media network.
Ismat Chughtai’s Quilt and Queer Desire
Long before India decriminalized homosexuality—in September 2018—the short story "Lihaaf" sparked outrage and a lawsuit for its depiction of same-sex, intergenerational intimacy.
Dave the Potter’s Mark on History
An enslaved African American in South Carolina did the unthinkable, writing his name on the walls of his vessels—and forever inscribing history.
The Spy Who Shared My Foyer
Luminaries from Agatha Christie to Walter Gropius gravitated to London’s “Lawn Road Flats.” So too did a far less conspicuous cohort: assets for the USSR.
The Fungi-Mad Ladies of Long Ago
In mycology’s early days, botanical drawing was, for some women, a calling. Their mushroom renderings were key to establishing this new field.
Laughing Matters
Sophia McClennen, author of Trump Was a Joke, discusses how political satire decoded the chaos of the forty-fifth presidency.