Criminal Injustice

Maya Schenwar On The Failure Of Mass Incarceration

Prison deepened my sister’s addiction, crushed her self-esteem, narrowed her options for jobs and education, and diminished her hope for a good life. She was in a much worse situation each time she came out.

While We Waited

My mother became a missing person in the summer of 1994, when I was fourteen. The day she disappeared, she told my father and me she was going to the Piggly Wiggly in Lineville, about ten miles from our home in Delta, Alabama. She didn’t come back.

Twenty-Seven And A Half Years

November 15, 1975, 3 AM on a Saturday morning, two months after my twentieth birthday. When the police came knocking on my door, I was sleeping. I’ve heard that’s how evil comes, in the dark of night. It don’t want to be seen.

The Laughter Club

It’s not surprising that trauma is the number-one killer of people under forty, but it had never been so obvious to me before I worked at a hospital.

Close To Home

For the last eight years, Michael Dvorak has photographed people in his home state of Minnesota. Taken at county fairs, parades, and on the streets in and around Minneapolis, the images are part of a series he calls “Close to Home.”

The Pearls

An engagement present from my husband’s parents, / they seemed like something from a yearbook photograph. / I’d have preferred a wrought-iron pendant, costume / beads that caught the sunlight.

On His Ninety-Fifth Birthday, I Find My Dead Father On The Internet

I can still picture the room where he set up his ham radio. / Homemade furniture. Threadbare rug. A small space heater.