An official NGO Observer at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Will describes the exterior of the courthouse where the 911 conspirators are tried for capital crimes. Sitting on a dilapidated “out-of-service airstrip,” the low-slung building looks like a toolshed, but upon entering the building visitors witness “the world’s most sophisticated technology.” This space is not a symbol; it represents the physical implementation of justice. The question is: Can the Guantanamo military commissions offer a narrative “to reaffirm the country’s values and to offer closure”?

Tender and instructive, the narrative and descriptive essay “Married Sleep” offers the reader an inside look—with equanimity—at a wife and husband team who makes it through a daughter’s debilitating illness, a husband’s demanding work schedule, and a wife’s alcoholism and healing.

These are the special tenants of Jones’ home: “A hound of calm character, lazy and laid-back”—this is Jack Jones—and a fierce “ten-pound terrier, black and white, with bulging eyes”—this is Dory. As the dogs age, Jones is cognizant of her own droopy eyelids and graying hair, but as long as she is alive they will add more dogs to their household.

“River Musings” is not only about the reclamation of the Willamette River that flows through Portland and the development of Waterfront Park, Portland’s gathering space. It is also about the Hide Naito family that ran a successful importing business; relocated to Salt Lake City during the Japanese internment; and returned to Portland later to enlarge their business and enrich the city with their philanthropy.

You would be forgiven if you read “Nobody’s Daughter” as fiction. It is, however, an essay. Either way, the subject is difficult to absorb but absorb you must to feel the full impact.

The word “mean” connotes “cruel,” “nasty,” or “malicious,” but Yalei Wang proposes a different way of looking at the word, and doesn’t apologize for “living life without getting caught in the weeds of emotion.”

An existential disquisition on the ultimate question: “Why are we here?” Doubting his teaching career, Martin returns to the novel Moby Dick to seek an answer to this perennial question. Perhaps in the end, it is unanswerable like “insight joined to silence.”

Carter Vance lays out a trenchant analysis of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential contest. He takes stock of his own position and concludes that the media must help to bring the opposing worlds “into conversation with each other.”

There is a tender mystery about life—little seeds are planted inside the heart, which grow over time. Most of us are unaware of these little seeds, but when the one you love departs from this world an unusual thing begins to happen. Those little unknown seeds begin to grow. At first we are unmindful of these little seeds, for the pain of the loss is so great. But, as that

Every Tuesday and Thursday noon, Michael Fassbender and his Photoshopped jaw interrupt my office hours. He usually disarms me when I’m skimming my required reading, or grading pop quizzes, or praying that no student materializes with the usual gamut of questions (“what exactly did you mean by thesis statement?”; “I currently have a D in your class, but I want an A, so, like…?”)—in other words, ole Fassbender announces himself when I’m exactly distracted enough to forget that he’s always lurking in the periphery.

Field Kallop is an artist whose primary tool is gravity. Her exhibition, The Melody of Structures, recently on view at The Tremaine Gallery, was an elegant contemplation of physics, mathematics, and the unseen structure of nature. The work is hard to categorize because it is at once drawing, sculpture, installation, and, during a public event when she constructed the piece, performance. As approximately fifty observers stood around the periphery of

Only four years ago, Morrie Markoff began his fifth career. He wanted to write, be a writer. This weekend, he will participate in the L.A. Times Book Festival reading from his first published book. Clearly, at age 103, the title of the book comes as no surprise: Keep Breathing The interview with Steve Lopez captured my imagination. I was surprised and delighted by what touched me in this interview: Keep

In the last year, I’ve taken an active, more formal approach to my writing by publishing an indie book on Kindle and CreateSpace, which led to submitting short stories here on bookscover2cover. However, looking back, the writer has always lived inside of me, that compulsion other authors will recognize to create stories on a blank sheet of paper. My earliest writing memory goes back to grade school. I was around