Catapult

Cover Photo: A man about to ride a hot air balloon

Places | On The Road

Shocked Quartz: Traveling with a Chronic Illness

Will the vertigo again become acute? Will the stress of this, or some root cause that spurs it, end my life before it might otherwise end?

Mar 26, 2020

Cover Photo: A close-up black-and-white photo of the shattered window of a car.

People | Culture | Bodies

Car Crashes, Climate Change, and Mothering Through Catastrophe

I recall a 2016 headline that warned, ‘Orangutans face complete extinction within ten years.’ Nash will be thirteen in 2026.

Christina Rivera Cogswell

Mar 24, 2020

Cover Photo: Photo collage of Lakshmi Shankar and Ella Fitzerald

Culture | Music

Ellaji and Lakshmiji

If Lakshmiji’s voice was silk, then Ellaji’s was satin.

Mar 23, 2020

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES

Catapult online classes: Kenneth R. Rosen, 4-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Place & Setting as Character, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

4-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Place & Setting as Character

Kenneth R. Rosen

Catapult online classes: Delaney Nolan, 6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Beginnings & Endings, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Beginnings & Endings

Catapult online classes: Sandy Allen, 6-Week Online Advanced Essay Workshop: Where Journalism & Memoir Collide, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Advanced Essay Workshop: Where Journalism & Memoir Collide

Catapult online classes: Sally Wen Mao, 8-Week Online Poetry Workshop: The Speculative Poet, Poetry, Workshop

Online | Poetry | Workshop

8-Week Online Poetry Workshop: The Speculative Poet

Catapult online classes: Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, 4-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Making Modern Love, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

4-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Making Modern Love

Jessica Ciencin Henriquez

Catapult online classes: Bruna Dantas Lobato, 6-Week Online Open-Genre Workshop: The Art of Translation, Fiction, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction, Nonfiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Open-Genre Workshop: The Art of Translation

Bruna Dantas Lobato

Catapult online classes: Aja Gabel, Colin Drohan, 2-Week Online Fiction Master Class: Time & Perspective, Novel, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Novel, Fiction | Workshop

2-Week Online Fiction Master Class: Time & Perspective

Aja Gabel & Colin Drohan

Catapult online classes: Sarah Elaine Smith, 6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Understanding Point of View, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Understanding Point of View

Sarah Elaine Smith

Columns

Cover Photo: A text message being typed out to spell "hore," an Indonesian word, as the autocorrect attempts to change the word to the English "horse"

Columns | Dialek / Dialect

Autocorrect Is Not Your Mother

Though tech assists so much of our daily communication, it’s not omniscient. Nor is it any kind of authority in our lives.

Khairani Barokka *

Mar 23, 2020

Cover Photo: Photograph of an embroidery panel created by the author's grandmother, featuring a young woman feeding birds, surrounded by flowering plants; the face of the young woman is taken from an old photograph of the author's grandmother

Columns | Invisible History

Searching for Family History in My Grandmother’s Embroidery

Together, the photograph and the needlework clearly told a story, one beyond any we knew.

Mar 17, 2020

Cover Photo: A photo of a man's hand pressing into the musculature of another man's back.

Columns | An Unquiet Mind

The Hands That Haunt Us: When Did Disability Become Consent?

You will remember, in fact, the first doctor who does ask, who says ‘is it okay if I put my hands here,’ gesturing, waiting for you to say ‘yes.’

Mar 17, 2020

Culture

Cover Photo: Photograph by Efe Kurnaz/Unsplash

The Homoerotics of Water

Cover Photo: A photo collage of tacos, a Frito pie, Houston barbecue, and other various delicious food items

What We Talk About When We Talk About Food: Noah Cho and Bryan Washington in Conversation

Bryan Washington and Noah Cho

Cover Photo: An image of a groom on the left and a bride on the right. The bride in a white dress holds a flower bouquet. The sun shines from the back, and we do not see the two faces.

When Language Wears Boots

New from Catapult Books

Spirit run cvr 72dpi transparent

Catapult | memoir

Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land by Noé Álvarez

Black sunday 3dcvr

Catapult | fiction

Black Sunday: A Novel by Tola Rotimi Abraham

Night theater cvr 72dpi transparent

Catapult | fiction

Night Theater: A Novel by Vikram Paralkar

Humiliation 3dcvr

Catapult | short stories

Humiliation: Stories by Paulina Flores

On vanishing 3dcvr

Catapult | nonfiction

On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear by Lynn Casteel Harper

Celestial bodies 3dcvr

Catapult | fiction

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth

Before and after the book deal 3dcvr

Catapult | nonfiction

Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum

A map is only one story 3dcvr

anthology | Catapult

A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home

Migrations

Cover Photo: A panoramic view of the mountainous countryside of Laos: rocky crags covered in lush trees, wide open fields, and a bright sky blanketed with fluffy clouds

Places | Migrations

For My Immigrant Parents, a Vacation Is a Reprieve from Labor—for Me, It’s a Time to Work

My parents wanted to give me opportunities that they never had, to let me participate in bizarre American rites of passage.

Nov 21, 2019

Cover Photo: A close-up of a statue of a qilin, a mythical beast of Chinese origin

Places | Migrations

Where Once Were Qilin: Return to Nanjing

What did it mean that now both the villages and the qilin were gone? This portal to the ancestors gone forever.

Oct 16, 2019

Cover Photo: A passport from the United Kingdom on a stone surface

Places | Migrations

Why Do Borders and Passports Dictate What Country I Get to Call Home?

The contours of a border become a lot less rigid when you carry what are deemed to be the right documents.

Sep 19, 2019

On Writing

Cover Photo: Illustration by Christina Chung for Catapult

Writing Advice for My Younger Self

Cover Photo: Photograph by Peter Lewis/Unsplash

How Translating Annie Dillard Helps Me Attend to a Dying World

Alejandra Oliva

Cover Photo: Cover art by Little A Books

What I Learned When I Set Out to Write an “Authentic” Latina Character

Stephanie Jimenez

Fiction

Cover Photo: A boy, a different boy's shadow, and a small dog atop a pile of trash in a small sea of stomach acid, looking up toward the opening and the light.

Fiction | Flash

AREA CANNIBALESS

Some just want a lick of fame, prostrate at my feet with their sweaty headshots as if I am the one to save them, as if they are worth saving.

Lauren Friedlander

Mar 20, 2020

Cover Photo: A balloon being held up in the middle of a field

Fiction | Short Story

Forever Atlas with a Balloon

What does a melon dream about as it bathes in tendrils of rainwater, wishing to be invisible?

Karen An-hwei Lee

Mar 13, 2020

Cover Photo: This illustration in bright, clashing greens show a huge nose peeking over the horizon, pulling a railway track into its nostrils with a great sniff

Fiction | Flash

The Smell of All Mothers

It was That Smell, that-so-familiar-one that hurt me not to remember where I’d smelled it before.

Mar 06, 2020