then there’s the war / that flabby, shriveled, animal word “war”

“second time I’ve lost my home,” she utters with hatred / “officially, this time”

Hold an assault rifle with my hand, use my mouth

we won't recognize this city anymore

I allowed myself to be very playful and unafraid, and to try everything.

When you are not held back by any fear, you can write songs of liberation.

Depleted as they were, they realized that they had to either team up or go under.

No doubt a few Galicians will think it in very bad taste to inaugurate this issue with a likeness to their higher profile southern neighbors, but because there may be a great many glad for the comparison,…

i come from a family built on longing.

These writings spark immediate conversations through rapid-fire literary texts rather than typical online commentary.

Enough of their butchery.

A nation’s upheaval cannot be understood without women's perspectives.

At that moment, there was another whistling sound, followed by a huge explosion.

She could not have known that the caller at the other end of the phone was about to faint.

It is one of those days when the winter sun is gorgeous, and you don’t want to even think of death.

While Arabic publishing has historically focused on literature for adults and young children, recent years have seen an increasing number of titles aimed at a young adult readership.

A young woman defies societal expectations to become Gaza’s first fisherwoman in this excerpt from Taghreed Najjar’s YA novel Against the Tide.

“It seems that Noor set fire to another student’s backpack.”

Soothsayers tell the truth even when they’re lying.

Khidr stepped out onto the street and was filled with an extraordinary horror.

A note from the editors on the occasion of our Rojava poetry feature.

What does he have to fear?

These poems display the health and vitality of a literature that has already proved to be a potent medium for self-expression, a grounds for linguistic experimentation, and an important declaration of autonomy itself.

I proceeded with caution / Like a marble inching toward the line

silence sullen-faced fate reaches my ears

The realities of life in Indochina had nothing in common with those of France.

“From here on out it’s rooftop to rooftop, hocam.”

I’m twelve years old, I won’t have to do a lot of time, I’ll be out before you know it.

In the current environment of relentless political strife . . . debate deteriorates into name-calling; partisans morph into zealots, complex issues are reduced to binary terms, and hostility seethes just beneath the surface.

Most massacres occurred after Friday prayers.

There were a lot of weapons being brandished, a lot of threats being shouted, and there was a lot of waiting around. The intifada uprising shifted from the streets onto the TV.

He tossed and turned in his bed, trying to wrest those hours from his memory.

“It wasn’t a civil war. It was a rebellion.”

Everyone knew that the way to become a revolutionary was through the Chinese language and not Tibetan.

Those are things you mustn't ask questions about. Some people get sad.

“They shoot them right outside their front door and then send their folks a bill for the bullets.”

They'd take the girls to the hills for three or five days.

I was bound. I was a registered piece of inventory. I was a liability. I wasn’t going anywhere.

It’s a dubious privilege that a woman can tell war stories as brutal and devastating as a man can.

The Party. The Revolution. Blood. All of it, together.

The human factor is not essential. Sunscreen—now that's essential.

You don’t become a war correspondent by accident or by chance.

The compassionate understand pain, but pain cannot be understood; those who suffer understand nothing.

A black woman, in the regime’s view, simply could not be an Italian.

Now you’ll be our daughter a little bit too.

Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves / and for the dead

The whole soldier shrugs off hurt.

But the evil blanketed her room and she agonized without remedy.

Our hands could not grip anything as long as their hands gripped our lives.

In short, the ongoing war in Syria is not a revolution.

One day there will be no men

I carried everything I had. It wasn't actually mine.

No one knows he used to be a man

Instead of talking, they seem to be patting each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.

The schoolchildren fill their backpacks / with tiny bombs.