Journal

Though set roughly a hundred years in the past, K.A.M. Lashley’s The Color Within offers a vision of America that mirrors our own time with a tightly bundled plot wound around a terrifying core of violence. There’s Cory, a boy treated poorly by fortune and worse by post-World War I America, who is pulled into a growing morass of racial tension that frequently boils up into outright violence during deadly race riots near his home in Chicago. Martin, Cory’s father, tries his best to keep his son from getting involved, all the while knowing that the color of their skin afforded neither of them the privilege of standing outside the fight.

Just when we thought we were in the clear from the chaos of 2020, Trump incited a mob of insurrectionists to storm the Capitol just in time to get 2021 off to a rolling start. Regardless of one’s political views, it should be clear that such violence is not the best traits of humanity. But for some, this incident has come as yet another reminder that action needs to be taken as inaction allowed these events to occur.

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.