December Poetry Curator Patty Seyburn
The Breakfast Burrito Is a Superior Food
Patty Seyburn is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Threshold Delivery, and a professor ...
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How the Pandemic Changed My Time in Prison
An Inmate Reflects on Nearly Three Years of Shifting Health Protocols and Halted Rehabilitation Efforts
Intense debates about the role of government interventions in public health became the norm during the pandemic ...
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Goodbye to My Family's Last Okie Migrant, Who Taught Us to Be Californian
The Passing of Great Aunt Fern Marks an Era's End
We ain’t Okies anymore.
My great aunt Fern was the last member of our big California family to be born in Oklahoma. But she never much cared for author John Steinbeck’s portrayals of her fellow Okies, in The Grapes of Wrath and other books, as the noble epitome of American working-class struggle.
We Okies were just people, she would say—no better than all the other people who migrated to California, and who sent their kids to the public schools where she taught for more than 40 years.
She was right about that, with one big caveat. Migrant families sometimes have one person who is more than ordinary, and thus changes the family’s trajectory. On my mother’s side of the family, that person was Fern. Before her, we were a family of poorly-educated migrant cotton-pickers in eastern Oklahoma. Today, we’re mostly middle-class Californians, some of us with fancy university degrees ...
The 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize Celebrates Poems of Place
No-Fee Contest Submissions Accepted November 2022–January 2023
How Germany Developed a ‘Policy on the Past’
A Constellation of Days Has Emerged to Remember the Holocaust and Its Victims
Germany does not have a traditional, centuries-old national holiday, such as July 14 in France or July 4 in the United States.
But Germany is carefully attuned to dates, and how they might be used to reckon with the history of dictatorships, encourage the maintenance of memorial sites, and spark remembrance in ways that draw the public to past sins, and provide vital information and moral orientation.
Reckoning with and making restitution for the Nazi dictatorship of 1933–1945, World War II, and the deaths and persecution of millions occupies Germany to this day—and probably will forever. The ongoing German work of remembrance around dates also should remind us of how frequently used phrases like “coming to terms with the past” (“Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”) or “processing the past” constitute a rather helpless vocabulary, and provide only a generalizing veil ...
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It Takes a Village to Tackle the Teen Mental Health Crisis
In Gonzales, California, Young People Are Turning to One Another—With the Support of Their Community—to Address a National Problem
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My Missed Connection Riding the L.A. Metro
A Passenger and Train Conductor Lock Eyes—But Poor Urban Planning and Four Lanes of Traffic Conspire to Keep Them Apart
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California Should’ve Called the Whole Election Off
November Ballots Are Predictable and Chock Full of Stuff We Don't Care About. They Don’t Have to Be
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Friendsgiving Puts Friendship Back Where It Belongs
For Centuries, Civilizations Revolved Around Relationships That Our Modern World Too Often Neglects
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Every Era’s Vampires Require New Blood
A Queer, Multiracial Adaptation of Anne Rice’s Seminal Novel Follows a 200-Year-Old Tradition
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Why Is Fantasy Stuck in the Middle Ages?
From the Latest Tolkien Adaptation to the New Thrones Series, a Genre Is Reckoning With Its Most Well-Known Setting
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Los Angeles Sends Writers in Novel Directions
Three Authors Share How the City Inspired and Influenced Their Stories
It is said that Los Angeles lacks a literary pulse—that the flash and glam of Tinseltown overpowers the cultural terrain. But writers here deftly channel this city’s rhythms, spinning fictions of folly and fortune that unfold under its roofs and along its streets. Last week, Zócalo, together with the Library Foundation’s ALOUD, honored L.A.’s literary side in a lively discussion with Fatimah Asghar, Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi, and Ryan Lee Wong, …
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Where I Go: Praying to the Pickleball Gods
Making the Pilgrimage to Bainbridge Island Connects Fans to the Sport’s Origins and to One Another
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Where I Go: Hunting Queer Ghosts in Chicago
Why Being Gay and Being Haunted Go Together in Fundamental Ways
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Where I Go: The Specter of the Cinema Café
My Favorite Diner Became a Casualty—and a Warning—of Merced’s ‘City on the Rise’ Ethos
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Writer Fatimah Asghar
Community is Something You Build
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Author Ryan Lee Wong
Suffering is Not Necessary to Create Meaningful Art
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Novelist and Biomedical Informatician Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
You Don’t Have to Write Every Day
