Yayladagi, Turkey, 2017 (detail, full image below)
Richard Mosse
digital chromogenic development print on metallic paper
(on display at Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE)

Monochromatic images have a fascinating way of communicating rich texture and dimension with strict limitations of color. Richard Mosse began documenting refugee camps in 2014, using a military-grade camera that detects infrared radiation to create photographs he calls “heat maps.” Mosse made this picture near the Syria-Turkiye border. The Yayladagi refugee camp is laid out in an austere grid that recalls the architecture of an internment camp. Riffing on traditional landscape photography, Mosse describes a vast scene in incredible detail, shedding light on both the physical and social landscape of the migrant crisis. I’m amazed at how beautifully Mosse (Rankine, Vaye Watkins, amongst others) are able to translate (/triage) the complexities and nuances of contrast and contradiction with such clarity .

"When I'm in the desert, I can feel a feeling of being a part of something bigger than me, which is how I think of the divine," says writer Claire Vaye Watkins. "I can really appreciate that I'm a part of this living land, and I give it something, and it gives me something."

[ Listen to the NPR FreshAir conversation with Claire Vaye Watkins. ]

[ READ the full poem here. ]

“Poet and essayist Rankine (Just Us) delivers an innovative, genre-defying mix of narrative and criticism centered on a contentious friendship between the narrator—presumably Rankine—and a character referred to as “the theorist.” … The pair’s viewpoints often differ, causing tension: the theorist is passionate that one must always rise up, as “knowing without action, no matter the scale, achieves nothing,” while the narrator is aware “there might be no solutions, only recognitions.” Throughout, the narrator analyzes artworks depicting couches, from lush to deformed, to illustrate how humanity’s self-inflicted destruction has rendered safety nets ineffective. … It’s a thought-provoking response to a broken world.”
- Publishers Weekly [Read the full review here.]

[ READ the NY Times Review of Triage. ]

What do humans require to be truly nourished? Simone Weil, one of the foremost philosophers of the last century, envisaged us all as being bound by unconditional, eternal obligations towards every other human being. In The Need for Roots, her most famous work, she argued that our greatest need was to be rooted: in a community, a place, a shared past and collective future hopes.

[ Only $.99! Buy Now ]

The Bridge at Le Pecq, 1904-05
oil on canvas
Andre Derain
(on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum)

In the fall of 1904, having recently completed his required service in the French military, Andre Derain returned to his home in Chatou, a small town on the Seine northwest of Paris. There he began to paint again, often working in the company of his friend Maurice de Vlaminck. Together the two artists (along with other greats such as Henri Matisse) forged a new style— fauvism— which made a significant break with the past, and altered the course of modern art.

With its unruly brushwork and vibrant, high-keyed palette, The Bridge at Le Pecq bears all of the marks of this new style. It depicts a bustling scene on the banks of the Seine at Le Pecq, a port where goods shipped by barge along the river were transferred to horse-drawn carts. I love this painting so much because it depicts the bustling with such vibrant and beautiful colors; yet, about a third of the painting is balanced with the cool shade with less color and movement. I certainly feel the bright, yet sometimes overwhelming bustling of the summer. I’m also reminded how essential balance and stillness is to our wholeness. I hope you’re able to spend time in the shade, too.

Two new books have been released this summer which share the conviction that careful attention can reshape the way we live, inviting readers to slow down, cultivate habits of observation, and discover meaning in places that are easily overlooked.

Richard Louv and Angelica Glass suggest that wonder is already present, waiting to be noticed in the ordinary rhythms of daily life, offering a quiet challenge to contemporary culture’s emphasis on speed, consumption, and distraction. Noticing [ Read the KIRKUS review here] presents attentiveness to nature as a practice that restores both human well-being and our relationship with the living world, while Scavenging Beauty [ Read the KIRKUS review here] celebrates how the practice of reflective walking can repair and become an expression of hope. Together, these books remind us that paying attention—to landscapes, to materials, and to the overlooked corners of our lives—is not merely an aesthetic exercise but a way of cultivating gratitude, creativity, and a deeper sense of belonging.

“Peter and John provocatively challenge us as individuals to understand the power of the individual and the potential of our work together. They also suggest local governments develop new ways of engaging and connecting residents to develop the assets available in all communities.”
—Robert J. O’Neill, Jr., Exec Director,
International City/County Management Assoc.

[ Only $3.99! Buy Now ]

Walking on Water - Glacier, 2020
Pulverized Azurite and Malachite on Polished Canvas, 84"x144"
Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose process-driven, refractive “slow art” has received critical recognition for over three decades. Nihonga is an ancient Japanese practice where mineral pigments are ground from stone—azurite, malachite, gold—and layered onto handmade paper in a process that honors both fragility and endurance, repeatedly washed down and reapplied. Fujimura brings Nihonga into conversation with contemporary American abstract tradition, allowing materials shaped over millennia to speak within a modern visual language. His work, therefore, is not only artistic but cultural stewardship: a continuation, a translation, and a quiet reimagining. Fujimura has recently published a book Art Is: A Journey into the Light - which is full of thoughtful reflection about his work. The book itself, with accompanying images, is beautiful to hold.

[ Read more about Fujimura’s series, Walking on Water ]

[ READ the full poem here]

[ Read a review of Ryokan’s newly translated book here ]

A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War, and the women who help her find her way home, from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Shandong

1950. It’s the coldest winter in decades, and twenty-eight-year-old Chinese American journalist Ellie Chang is on a military flight to cover a battle in the mountains of North Korea when her plane is shot down. As she emerges from the fallen aircraft onto an icy field surrounded by the enemy, Ellie is sure it’s the end, certain she’ll never make it home to her parents...until a woman pushes her way through the crowd and claims Ellie as the lost daughter that she’s been searching for since the last war ended. Never mind that Ellie doesn’t speak a word of Korean.

[ READ NPR’s review of this book ]

Installation view of the MoMa exhibition: Adam Pendleton: Who is Queen? 2021
photograph by Andy Romer

Adam Pendleton, a central figure in contemporary abstract painting, is known for works that push the boundaries of the medium through a sustained engagement with process, language, and form. His work is a distilled layering of gesture and fragments of words and letters. His work has been featured several times by NewYork Times and you can follow him work on Instagram.

[ READ an interview with Adam Pendleton, about his exhibit Who is Queen? ]

[ READ the full Pauli Murray poem here ]

Pauli Murray is one of my very favorite poets. There is a great documentary about her on Prime Video called My Name is Pauli Murray. Watch the trailer here.

In very different ways, Backtalker by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout both explore the cost of silence and the complicated necessity of speaking. Crenshaw’s memoir is rooted in public voice: a powerful account of finding language for injustice, naming structures of race and gender, and “talking back” to systems that demand quiet compliance. Strout’s novel, by contrast, turns inward, tracing the private loneliness, withheld truths, and emotional distances that can shape ordinary lives and relationships. Together, the books form a compelling juxtaposition—one asking what happens when people finally speak out, the other lingering over all that remains unspoken between those who love one another most.

[ LISTEN to an NPR Fresh Air conversation with author of Backtalker, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw ]


[ READ the Publishers Weekly review of The Things We Never Say ]

Women Talking: A Novel
by Miriam Toews

***ONLY $2.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

Vela I & II, 2024
polyester and Lycra pantyhose, seasland on canvas stretcher with teak frame
Turiya Magadlela, South African, b. 1978

South African artist Turiya Magadlela transforms everyday materials like pantyhose, prison sheets, and other found fabrics into abstract works rich with personal and political meaning. In the diptych Vela I & II, she stretches and layers different shades of red pantyhose over wooden frames. Pantyhose is a material that is usually associated with women, and here the material suggests both delicacy and strength. Magadlela’s process— twisting, stitching, and layering— is one of emotional and physical labor creating works that resonate both visually and conceptually.

[ READ the full poem
+ an accompanying essay here]

Fan of Ada Limón?
Check out 4 more favorite poems from our friends at The Englewood Review of Books

Two lifelong peace activists and guides to Israel/Palestine, both of whom have lost family in the conflict, take readers on a revealing life-changing journey across this holy, bloodstained land and discover the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples.

“[A] short but immensely poignant account of a shared journey across Israel and the West Bank . . . raw with pain and rage and yet bravely insistent on the imperative of hope.”—The New York Times

[ READ the NY Times Review of this book ]

A few weeks ago, the American Library Association (ALA) released its highly anticipated Top 11 Most Challenged Books List of 2025 as part of the 2026 State of America’s Libraries Report, offering a window into the ongoing challenges libraries continue to face head-on.

As the nation’s libraries unite to celebrate the start of National Library Week and communities everywhere recognize the valuable contribution of America’s libraries and the people who power them, library workers around the country continue to grapple with censorship challenges and threats to their livelihood.

[ READ the full report here ]

The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
by Maria Smilios

***ONLY $1.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

The Game That You Learnt From the Morning (Broken Barns Series)
Amanda Evanston, 2026

“Broken Barns is a collection of Midwestern landscapes—fields, skies, and small collapsing barns standing as quiet witnesses to the passage of time. These are not polite pastoral scenes, but places with backbone and memory, places where the land itself takes center stage. Each weathered structure hints at the systems and sanctuaries once built with conviction—governments, churches, families, committees—now trembling under their own weight.”

“Yet the fields remain steady. Soil stays faithful. It makes room for roots, insists on new growth, and waits patiently for rain and tending hands. Midwesterners have long romanticized farming because it offers a kind of creation story: ordinary people coaxing life from stubborn ground with faith, labor, and a hope that the weather cooperates. Barns may lean and fall, but when the soil is sound, resilience rises. Beauty come from broken places—it always has.” - Amanda Evanston

***See if you can spot the tiny barn in this piece!***

[ READ the full poem here]

The author of Finding the Mother Tree and scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees, Suzanne Simard now offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal.

"A masterclass on the inner workings of forests. . . . This is science as an act of love for the world.” —Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters

[ READ the Publishers Weekly Review of this book ]

[By Colin Dwyer, via NPR] “April may well be "the cruelest month," as T.S. Eliot famously opined — and even a five-minute doomscroll makes it tough to deny that cruelty is riding at anything but record levels lately. But remember you do have an alternative to doomscrolling, one that's been around much longer: cracking open a book — or doomflipping, I suppose you could call it…”

[ Continue reading about April’s new books ]

The Book of Delights: Essays
by Ross Gay

***ONLY $2.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

We often think of paradox in terms of extreme opposites: black and white, hard and easy, happy and sad. Paradox can also include less-differentiated, more subtle contrasts between things: grateful and gloomy, bright and confused, or like in this piece, what I see is both abstract and familiar. I love Robert Rauchenberg’s work, in part because of the textured ways that he expresses complexity. There’s always something in his work that makes me wonder, that invites me toward curiosity, that causes me to look more closely.

[ Read more about Robert Rauschenberg. ]

[ READ the full Paul Laurence Dunbar poem ]

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society. Project Gutenberg has made available The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar as a free ebook. [ Access this book here! ]

An intense, atmospheric novel about the devastating power of friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events

“Reading Under Water is like being under water: immersive and stirring, pellucid and mysterious, shot through with light and with shades, overwhelming and exquisite–in a word, sublime.” —Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift and The Furrows

[ READ the KIRKUS starred review of this book ]

A glimpse of Iran, through the eyes of its artists and journalists

Iranian artists have produced excellent, critically- admired movies, books, and music for decades, sometimes made in secret, and often risking serious consequences because of Iran’s laws around censorship. Cutting Through Rocks is an inspiring documentary that follows Sara Shahverdi — a divorced, childless motorcyclist — as she campaigns to become the first woman elected to the city council of her remote village. In the book, For the Sun After Long Nights journalists Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, chronicles — almost in real time — the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that began in 2022, during which Jamalpour was working secretly as a journalist in Tehran.

[ READ more about Iran’s movies, books, and music. ]

North American Bird Watching for Beginners:
Field Notes on 150 Species to Start Your Birding Adventures
by Sharon Stiteler

***ONLY $2.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

Nigerian-American textile artist Sarah Nsikak grew up in Oklahoma and brings together two worlds of patchwork: the patchwork culture from the American ‘Bible Belt,’ and the patchwork inspired by African proverbs, Asafo flags from Ghana that are a sign of combativeness and by the patchwork Herero dresses from Namibia, that represent resilience.

[ Follow Nsikak on Instagram ]

[ READ the full Mari Evans poem ]

Maya Angelou once called Mari Evans the “greatest living poet,” and she is one of Indianapolis’s greatest literary treasures, her larger-than-life image featured in a prominent place in downtown Indianapolis. To hear Evans read 4 of her own poems, check out this post by The Englewood Review of Books.

Two standout novels in this week’s releases feature unforgettable women at the center of their stories. In Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, Iris Hawkins—a young London clerk during the Blitz—finds herself drawn into a strange web of angels, conspiracies, and forces that threaten the course of history, revealing a quiet courage and moral clarity amid wartime chaos. Originally published in 2016 and ever more relevant upon its 10th anniversary, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood tells the harrowing story of women secretly imprisoned in the Australian outback after scandals involving powerful men. Through characters like Yolanda and Verla, Wood crafts a fierce and unsettling tale of survival, resistance, and solidarity. Both novels offer gripping narratives shaped by women whose strength and resolve carry them through extraordinary circumstances.

[ READ the Publishers Weekly starred review of this Nonesuch ]

[ LISTEN to NPR’s review of The Natural Way of Things ]

10 Books for a Mental Vacation

If you happen to be in need of an escape — from the lingering grip of winter, say, or you know, [gestures expansively] all of this — it's important to recall there are productive alternatives to doomscrolling.

[ READ about NPR’s full list of mental break books here. ]

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
by Angela Y. Davis ***ONLY $1.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

Espérance by Jean Edelbluth, Collage 19 x 26 cm

On espère toujours des adoucissements, je les espère aussi ; l’espérance m’a trop bien servie pour l’abandonner. - Madame de Sévigné (lettre de 1665).

Translation, “One always hopes for some relief, and I hope for it too; hope has served me too well for me to abandon it.”

Jean Edelbluth (b. 1986) lives with his family— the father of 5— in Bouxwiller, a small town near Strasbourg in eastern France. He studied design at the Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts, then trained as a shoemaker, and later joined a small non-profit publishing house. He nurtures his creative rhythm via painting, where he explores his long-standing fascination with color.

“I save the cardboard boxes as long as my children continue to eat cereal! But I also like to use the covers of old books. The last time was at the waste disposal centre, where a man was clearing out the contents of a house, including some old books in German that I was able to rescue from the rubbish… There is definitely an appeal to things that are not usually considered.”

[ Follow Edelbluth’s on Instagram ]

[ READ the full Tracy K. Smith poem ]

As Poet Laureate in 2018, Tracy K. Smith began hosting a podcast called The Slowdown as a pathway for slowing things down, looking at them closely, and mining each moment for all that it houses. The podcast is now hosted by Maggie Smith, whose forthcoming book of poetry, A Suit or Suitcase, comes out later this month.

In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking beauty wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world.

“I go to Terry Tempest Williams for the reasons I go to Whitman and Thoreau: to recover a capacious spirit and to rejoin the urgent living world. She gives me something bigger than hope.” - Richard Powers, author of The Overstory

[ READ the Publishers Weekly review of this book ]

Growing Hope in our Urban Communities

In a history that has been hidden in plain sight, working-class gardeners have consistently played an outsized role. In London, they devised ways to feed themselves when wage labor fell short. In Paris, a superabundance of horse manure in the streets nourished urban gardens that fed two million residents. In Berlin, gardeners built social safety nets for those marginalized by the state. In Washington, DC, African American migrants brought rural traditions of self-provisioning that were later disrupted by “urban renewal.” In rustbelt Mansfield, Ohio, farming ex-cons grow hope for the city’s future. In post-Soviet Estonia, shared gardens became lifelines for survival amid economic upheaval. And in Amsterdam, activists are reclaiming sustainable farming practices in a sinking landscape oversaturated with fertilizers. Tiny Gardens Everywhere blends past and present, archive and experience, to offer a truly inspiring vision of the transformative potential of gardening and urban life.

[LISTEN to an NPR conversation with the author of this book]

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
by Jared Diamond ***ONLY $1.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

Tiny Offerings by a Textile Artist

Claire Voelkel-Sedlmeir creates slow, hand-stitched textile work from repurposed and sentimental fabrics. Imperfections, memory, and everyday stories guide her process, often resulting in small, thoughtful pieces made as gifts for others. Often strangers! In 2026, Claire is making (for the second year in a row) one tiny quilt per week. At the end of the year, she will give them all away. Learn more about her work on her website or on Instagram.

Women (3 in a series of 14)
by Joanna Selby, age 6, 2024
Colored pencil on paper

No genre of humanity is better at paying attention than kids. Their artwork is captivating—marked by honesty, moodiness, humor, and a knack for unexpected details and surprising themes. Artists like Judith Raphael place children — especially girls — in roles that reference identity and agency, reimagining children with strength, presence, and depth rather than primarily passive innocence. Children see the world with a beauty and perceptiveness that invites us to slow down and learn. How we care for and nurture the children in our communities truly matters.

The Kids Who Aren’t Okay: The Urgent Case for Reimagining Support, Belonging, and Hope in Schools by Ross W. Greene

From a New York Times bestselling authority on education and children’s mental health comes a groundbreaking guide to navigating classroom challenges through an approach that is aimed at meeting kids where they’re at and being responsive to the developmental variability inherent in every classroom.

[LISTEN to a conversation with the author about this book]

Mychal Threets is an American librarian, author, and advocate known around the world for spreading “library joy” — positivity, literacy advocacy, and mental health empowerment. With millions of followers on social media and a growing presence on PBS (including hosting a Reading Rainbow reboot), Mychal uses stories from the library and heartfelt messages to remind people that you belong. Follow him on Instagram:

[Check out the Reading Rainbow reboot here.]

[ READ an interview with the author of this book ]

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman ***Only $4.99***
[Buy Now]

Bonus Poem!

I recently came across this poem from 2018, words from my 3 year old that I transcribed as she drew one of her favorite joys: the night sky. (I didn’t have easy access to the photo that goes along with it. I’ll let your imagination suffice.)

A fuuuuuuuuull full moon and a star
This is a little booboo.
These are called rains,
little drops of rain.
These are called some little stars.
I see the stars in the night,
a bright bright star.
A little bubble star.
Here’s a Jupiter star and Mars.
This is called the Venus.

She Always Believed the Good about Those She Loved, 2018 by Amy Sherald

Amy Sherald is a contemporary American painter best known for her striking portraits that center everyday Black life. Using a distinctive grayscale palette for skin tones, Sherald draws attention away from race as spectacle and toward presence, character, and interiority. Through this approach, Sherald expands the tradition of American portraiture, inviting viewers to see ordinary Black lives as worthy of contemplation, care, and enduring beauty. Her exhibit, “American Sublime,” is currently on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

[ Check out Sherald’s exhibit here. ]

[ READ the full Lucille Clifton poem ]

Rev. James Lawson was one of the most influential yet unheralded heroes of the civil rights era. He rose as a strategist, teacher, and organizer in pivotal campaigns on the national stage against racial and economic injustice. Peer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., mentor to Congressman John Lewis and the Freedom Riders, and a principal architect of a nonviolent resistance movement that changed the world, this posthumous memoir “…is a gift to be treasured, from a man who has already given so much.” —Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life

[ READ the Publishers Weekly starred review of this book ]

A daughter reexamines her own family
story in The Mixed Marriage Project

From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who “has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades” (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter’s journey to understand her parents’ marriage—and her own identity.

[LISTEN to the NPR Fresh Air conversation with the author of this book]

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin ***ONLY $1.99!***
[ Buy Now ]

Bonus Podcast Recommendation!

Kate Bowler recently re-shared her 2022 conversation with Bryan Stevenson, an American lawyer, law professor, and human-rights advocate who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and champions justice for the poor, wrongfully condemned, and marginalized.

[ LISTEN to Bowler’s conversation with Bryan Stevenson]

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