I sat cross-legged on a curb in the middle of New Jersey in the middle of the 1970s and wrote a poem about despair. I was fourteen, it was humid and windless, and I was waiting outside my father’s girlfriend’s apartment to go home where my father and I had barricaded...
Usually, I am one to find the thread of dark humor even in the worst of circumstances. But I found myself at a loss. I had been increasingly depressed and anxious since a confluence of world and family events descended, including family deaths and friends’ severe...
For most of my life, I could not bear my own face. Though I would recognize what I saw in the mirror as familiar, I did not feel it was mine. What I did feel was that it was wrong. I was raised like a prisoner on an island that most consider a paradise. My parents...
We admire stoics. Those who bear the wounds of this life in venerable silence. The grandfather or uncle who never spoke of their wartime experiences, for instance. We might pity stoics, too. Those who never found a voice of their own—the words, the ability, the...
A message from Art Saves Lives editor, Ben Weakley about our open submissions period. We build community one story, one voice, at a time. In February this year, my dear friend and colleague Seema Reza entrusted me to be the editor of an essay series that enacted a...
