Nonfiction
Essays
Narrative nonfiction and reportage, plus selected columns from WBUR’s Cognoscenti.
Narrative Nonfiction and Reportage
- An Only Slightly Embellished Account of Singing “The Circle Game” to Four-Year-Old Avie in Peruse Zine
- An Invisible Wake in Caustic Frolic
- Leaving Cambridge for the Comfort of Strangers in The Boston Globe
- Try Harder in BioStories
- Invasions in Midnight Oil
- My Last Brisket in Pangyrus
- More Love in Green Briar Review
- Another Act in The Wax Paper
- Detectives in Pangyrus
- Signs in The Journal of War, Literature, and the Arts
- Working Average in The Diverse Arts Project
- Our Wed and Unwed Mothers in Summerset Review
- Aliens in Shenandoah
- Esther Bubley’s Interiors in The Yalobusha Review
- Private Moments, Public Relations in Tampa Review
- The Writing Life: A Profile of Leah Hager Cohen in Holy Cross Magazine
- Mindfulness and Memoir in The Writer’s Chronicle
- The Overachiever in Yuan Yeng
- W Dallas in Schuykill Journal of the Arts
- Synchro Moms in Ninth Letter
- Nixon’s Farewell in Eleven Eleven
- Inventorying Phoebe in Ellipsis
- Power Lines in Crack the Spine
- Prague Afternoon in The South Carolina Review (starts on Page 81)
- An Accounting in The Rambler
- The Trail in The Dos Passos Review
- Right Brain Wrong Mind in The Louisville Review
- Table Manners in The Almanac for Farmers and City Folk
Cognoscenti Blog Posts
- What I’ve learned by volunteering with recent immigrants to the US
- Earworms: Annoying or revolutionary?
- Our “obligations” to the dead
- Trump and Republicans’ Assault on Language
- Not all jobs require literacy skills. But nearly all job applications do
- Guinness World Records has always been about more than trivia
- Now that I’m the ancestor, it’s time for a new dream
- What Happens When a Woman Takes Power?
- Trump Pits Immigrants and Working Class Americans Against Each Other
- The Fearless Compassion of Alice Munro
- My Mother Never Stopped Loving the World
- Nostalgia is lovely, and a waste of time
- How we should remember Diane Feinstein
- What’s so Bad about the Word “Old”?
- John, Paul, George, Ringo … and AI?
- In Gordon Lightfoot’s Lyrics, I Still Hear the Sounds of Home
- George Santos Covered “Hallelujah:” I Listened so You Don’t Have To
- Not Spot, Not Fido: She’s Billie, and That’s Enough
- Nancy Pelosi’s Long Road
- The World is Burning
- A Letter from Edinburgh
- Joni Mitchell’s Not Done Yet
- The Trees were Here First
- I’ve Been Trying to Explain America to Afghan Refugees. It’s Not Going Well.
- What Florida Won’t Teach its Kids
- Why a Return to “Normal” is the Last Thing We Need
- The Art (and Artlessness) of Self-Promotion
- The Ruthlessness of Joan Didion
- The Danger of “Safe Spaces”
- Facebook has only Itself to Blame
- The Phantom Hum: Tinnitus as a Metaphor
- Hey Google, Who Was I Before I Met You?
- These Young People Wrote More than College Essays
- Why “A Case of You” is the Best Love Song of All Time
- The America we Choose
- In 2020, is Fairness Dead?
- Why we Should Care about QAnon
- How to Cope when we’re Locked in the Perpetual Present
- Self-Care Isn’t a Privilege. It’s an Act of Self-Preservation
- Coping with the Pandemic and Finding Purpose, in my Kitchen
- Thank You is Not Enough: Taking Care of the People we Need Most and Pay the Least
- The Virus Has No Political Preference
- Elizabeth Warren’s Anger is Risky. It’s Also Necessary.
- The Danger of “Bernie or Bust”
- Trump’s Peace Plan is a Win-Win … for Himself and Netanyahu
- Harry and Meghan Want to Go Their Own Way
- There’s No Such Thing as Ideological Purity
- The Gift of Showing Up
- It’ll Take More than Evidence to Convict Donald Trump
- Nancy Pelosi’s Long Game
- Republicans Don’t Have to be Trump Sycophants
- The Business Roundtable has a Change of Heart? I Think Not.
- Democrats Shouldn’t be Afraid of Socialism
- The Fleeting Hope and Wonder of Men on the Moon
- The Case for Reparations
- The Manipulated Pelosi Video: Why We Embrace Fiction over Fact
- The Toxic Myths of White Supremacy
- In Praise of Old Friendships
- The Title X Gag Rule Plays Politics with Women’s Health
- The Art of Asking Questions
- What Good is Republicans’ Rebuke of Steve King if they Remain Silent on Trump?
- The Christmas Tree I Never Had
- Don’t Investigate — Legislate
- What Motivates Arctic Explorers?
- Remember Life Before Social Media?
- Anger can Take Us only So Far
- Playing Hardball isn’t Just for Republicans Anymore
- It Happens to All of Us Eventually
- Spirit in the Dark: Everyone has an Aretha Story. This is Mine.
- I Keep Trying to Understand Trump Voters, but I Keep Failing
- What’s “Offensive” Art? The Answer isn’t Black and White
- Relief is the One Stage of Grief No One Talks About
- Why Companies Shouldn’t Fear Customers Reclaiming their own Data
- Anthony Bourdain Taught Us Food is Much More than What’s on the Plate
- The NRA Doesn’t Get to Play the Victim
- When the Infirmities of Age Render Us Exiles
- Why “Wild Wild Country” Resonates Today
- What is a Dignified Death?
- Is Principle or Profit Driving the Companies Changing their Gun and NRA Policies?
- Resistance, Privilege, Consent, Victimization
- Blackbird Endures as a Meditation on the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights
- Protecting our Minds from Digital Distractions
- Will the Lure of Convenience Give Way to the Surveillance State?
- Using Truth to Tell Vicious Lies
- Why Fear — At a Distance — Helps us Feel Safe
- #MeToo Flared but won’t Endure
- It’s Time to Politicize Las Vegas
- Lessons for an Anxious Time
- No, I Don’t Watch “Game of Thrones”
- The Pain of a Large Woman in a Small-Minded World
- 50 Years On, Remembering the “Our World” Broadcast
- When Words Mean Nothing: Trump’s Comey Tweets and a Presidency in Crisis
- The Way Forward: Trying to See the Human Face Behind the Terror
- Bots and the Right Wing Hijacking of Social Media
- Transforming a Home — and the Nature of a Mother/Daughter Relationship
- Not your Mother’s Feminism: Teen Vogue and the Next Wave of Activism
- A Trip to the Nail Salon: A Lesson on America
- Hats Off: Remembering Mary Tyler Moore
- Before the Women’s March: The Privilege of Debating Privilege
- Stop Making Sense: Why Self-Deception (and Donald Trump) Aren’t Going Away Anytime Soon
- Reality Bites Back: Fake News, Fallacious Tweets, and the Assault on Facts
- We Want the World and We Want It Now
- Down Syndrome’s Tiniest Ambassador
- Write What you Know?
- Who will Care for the Caregivers
- Treacherous Beauty
- How we Regard Huma Abedin and Why it Matters
- Mother or Muslim, Black or White
- Pragmatism Doesn’t Mean Surrender
- The Real Reason White Evangelical Voters Support Donald Trump
- New Lessons from Walden Pond
- Sleeping in Strangers’ Beds
- In a Dogma Eat Dogma World, a Defense of Political Correctness
- Why the Facebook Trending Topics Controversy Matters
- Making a Fashion Misstatement
- Luck and the “Self-Made” Man
- The Vast and Glittering World Inside Him
- Blinded by the Shiny New Thing
- The Quiet Joy of Unimportance
- Trump, AIPAC, and the Search for Moral Clarity
- Wow! Love Facebook Reactions? Or Sad Them?
- Pure Wind: Using “1984” to Understand Election 2016
- Saying Someone Else’s Prayers: Religiosity in 2016 and Beyond
- Blizzard PTSD
- Turn and Face the Strange
- It Can Happen Here: Why the Reissue of Mein Kampf Couldn’t Happen at a Better Time
- The Era of the ‘Mecosystem’ is Upon Us
- Beyond Routine Lies: When the Leaders of the Pack are the Most Dishonest
- Using Virtual Reality to Shine a Light on Real World Problems
- Welcome Distractions: The Triumph of Normal Life
- Hiding in the Crowd: The Myth of Ted Cruz’s Citizen-Funded Campaign
- Attention Must Be Paid: How Death of a Salesman Changed a Life
- In Third GOP Presidential Debate, a Perplexing Anti-Government Theme
- Meryl Streep’s Teeshirt is Not the Issue
- Make it Work: Why Political Contests should Emulate Project Runway
- Dear Ignorant People
- Images of Death Can’t Teach us How to Live
- In the Attacks on Planned Parenthood, it’s Vulnerable Women who Suffer
- Witness to ‘A Terrifying Century:’ E.L. Doctorow Tribute
- The Curious Case of the Missing “I”
- Women’s World Cup Soccer and Why I Had to Watch
- Mixed Feelings about the Mining — and Manipulating — of Emotions
- What do we Relinquish When we Say “I Forgive You”?
- Does Caring for the Elderly Require us to Segregate Them?
- Periscope Review
- Too Wrinkly to Rock?
- Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech, and the Freedom to Disagree
- Humiliation in the 21st Century: Should we be Ashamed of Public Shaming?
- Amazon Dash Brings us One Step Closer to Never Leaving Home Again
- Monica Lewinsky’s Second Act
- Reclaiming a Heritage of Debate
- To my Selfie-Obsessed Fellow Travelers
- Guilt Trip: What Happens when Unearned Shame Meets Undeserved Suffering
- It’s Cool-Hunting Season
- Nounification and Other Assaults on the English Language
- Digital Natives: Plugged in, but Connected?
- What’s wrong with Emotional Contagion, Anyhow?
- Six Reasons Why Listicles Must Die!
- What does it Mean when we Need an App to Write our Facebook Updates?
- Talking About Race without Speaking in Code
- Why Marathon is a Terrible Metaphor for Life
- Why Jokes Matter
- PhotoShocked
- It’s Hard to ‘Lean In’ When you’re Working for Minimum Wage
- Regulars: The Casual Encounters that Shape our Days
- What We’re Like When We Like Something We Don’t Really Like at All
- Losing Touch with the Old Ways of Finding our Way
- Measurable Me
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