Our Favorite Essays of 2023

In the Boxing Ring. At a Parking Lot. Through Prison Glass. These Stories Captured the Sights, Sounds, and Heart of the Year

South Africans got it right when they made “kuning,” the isiZulu word that roughly translates to “it’s a lot,” one of the defining words of 2023.

It was a lot this year.

2023 seemed an epoch of crises: the highest number of global conflicts in three decades, myriad climate disasters that claimed more than 12,000 lives, and the erosion of democracies worldwide.

Amid all of it, Zócalo was here—sifting through the pressing stories and providing context, perspective, and humanity.

Our favorite 15 essays of the year, selected by the Zócalo staff and you, our …

Whose Sedona Is It, Anyway?

The Arizona City—Long Defined by Visitors and Outsiders—Is Fighting Over the ‘Right Kind’ of Tourist

You’d think that a town dependent on tourist dollars could never stop advertising itself. But in Sedona, Arizona, as wealthy residents’ weariness of riffraff jamming up their roads sparked a …

Extreme Heat Is Boring

But Can Feeling Trapped Indoors Motivate Us to Climate Action?

The first time I met someone from Tucson, Arizona, I asked him a burning—pardon the pun—question. How did people there tolerate the summer heat? I pictured my childhood summers in …

Kari Lake Is Just the Latest Arizona Hustler

From Make-Believe Springs and Real Estate Scams to Disappearing Ballots, the State Soaks Up Hallucinatory Claims Like Rain

Kari Lake isn’t giving up. Even as she prepares to mount a campaign for U.S. senator, and more than two months after her election opponent was sworn in as Arizona’s …

Are You Cursed If You Steal Rocks From the Petrified Forest?

A Photographer Ponders Beauty, Truth, and the Guilt of Visitors Who Pilfer Souvenirs From the Arizona National Park

In 2011, I was traveling in Arizona photographing meteorites and the misidentified meteorites known as “meteor-wrongs.” My work with the meteor-wrongs went quicker than expected and my wife and I …