The Offing
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This Week in Essays
At Real Life, Emma Healey makes a well-stated case for why Periscope’s Couch Mode may be the escape we all need. Ijeoma Oluo has written an important essay on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. for The Establishment. In our troubling present reality, we…
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Turkish Delight
TI say we are not together. I say that we are not together, but I see him everywhere. He spent a summer here, summers and summers ago, and I booked my ticket to get closer to him and I booked…
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Lost in Translation
There is such a stark cognitive dissonance at present—Black writers winning prestigious literary awards and facing watermelon jokes in the same moment, White editors wanting racial diversity while still publishing racist poems. With an introduction by new Editor-in-Chief Chanda Prescod-Weinstein,…
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Kids and Wars
At one point in the conversation, Watts said: “I always imagined those soldiers using paintball guns, that the war was just a large-scale version of what we played as kids.” I confessed that the same thought had occurred to me.…
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This Week in Short Fiction
This is supposed to be a story. This is the first sentence of “The Alive Sister,” a powerful new work of flash fiction by Megan Giddings published at The Offing on Monday. In it, two little black girls are playing…
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A Running Start
Over at The Offing, Linda Chavers pens an important letter to “black girls everywhere”: I am giving you the prologue. You must go forward accepting and understanding that no one will ever do it as well as you do, and…
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Places to Call Home
Rather than being shot at, my new fear would be of seeing the officers unleash violence upon a helpless body, having to watch within the confines of my approximated uniform, padded with a bullet proof vest, which would incontrovertibly claim…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Over the last several weeks, The Offing has been releasing a stream of stunning work from its 2015 Trans Issue, and the collection of transgender/non-binary voices they’ve cultivated forms one of the most powerful issues of any magazine we’ve seen this…
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The Sound of Different Voices
If we are to truly speak to, from, and about the margins, to which voices are we to tune our ears? The Offing has a new special issue devoted to trans and non-binary artists. Editor Jayy Dodd introduces this project and…
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Do Reading Fees Exploit Writers?
In recent years, many reputable publications have taken to charging reading fees and earlier this year, Nick Mamatas set off an Internet kerfuffle over The Offing‘s reading fee policies. The ethical quandary surrounding reading fees persist—not only are reading fees obstacles…
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Open a Door for The Offing
The Offing is a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices. It’s only been around since March, but The Offing has already published over 150 writers and artists and has a staff that is one of…
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The Long Shadows of the Dead
I sobbed as I read, for the first time grieving someone I’d never known, but also grieving for myself because I was alive, and convinced I could never be as good. Natalie Villacorta writes for The Offing about the dead…