Journal

Before 2020 rocked the world, we lived in a culture whose moral compass was often guided by stories of heroes: characters leaping from the pages of comic books in patriotic colors, interplanetary battle-monks dueling with space-fascists, superpowered assassins with a preternatural talent for choreographed killing.

Coffee lovers! If you’re like me, you’ve probably either invested in some fun coffee gear for at-home delights or you’ve just gotten creative in your concoctions. As we head into the holiday season, let’s keep the caffeine going so we can gear through the darkest time of the year with warm brews and sultry scents.

Since most of us have been home for most of the year, this blog will focus on at-home brewing methods that are (hopefully) accessible to a wide range of folks!

In Carly Eccles Sheaffer’s Compass Rose, a pivotal, life-altering stroke of chance occurs inside a travel agency. In this unassuming place—which today feels like an echo from the past—a handful of lives rearrange themselves around a reunion of two souls separated by fate. That juxtaposition of the meaningful over the mundane provides the texture of this lovingly spun debut novel, which charges unassuming spaces with rich emotional currents of grief, guilt, and joy.

Have you ever noticed when you’re looking at makeup products that each shade darker in the foundation section sounds more and more edible? You go from Ivory and Porcelain to Mocha and Espresso in a heartbeat. And if that only relates one thing to you, it’s that people of color are not the ones naming these products that are supposedly designed for them.

The coffee industry is the same.

Here are some tips for allies to be especially vigilant in their writing careers as they remain dedicated to providing space and support for their BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled colleagues.

Chaos reigns as humanity fights off a global health crisis, and division catalyzes violence. A poorly understood virus topples the scaffolding of human society. In unseen laboratories, researchers race to find a cure, pursuing treatments so far outside the realm of medical science they seem almost arcane. Time is running out, and as the clock ticks, humanity gradually, violently consumes itself.

Being a BIPOC creative can be really difficult to have to navigate one's experience in this white, cishet, male world. But here are some tips that have helped me along my own creative journey and given me the confidence to not only embrace my cultural identity but to make space for it in the narrative as well.

A queer, nonbinary writer based in Los Angeles, Misao McGregor reflects on her heightened anxiety amidst the 2020 pandemic, impending election, civil unrest, and California wildfires, and ultimately finds refuge in the pages of a young tween novel she has finally decided to give herself permission to enjoy: Twilight.