Catapult

Cover Photo: A screenshot of Rihanna from the "Rude Boy" music video. Her hair is teased up into a puffy mohawk and she is staring intensely into the camera against a bright red and orange backdrop of colorful scribbles.

Arts & Culture | Music

Rihanna and the Legacy of Liberated Caribbean Women

I wanted to be loud, wild, and sexually liberated like them. I just didn’t know how.

Dec 07, 2022

Cover Photo: Photograph courtesy of the author

Places | On The Road

The Whole Country Is Fighting: A Dispatch from Ukraine

“The whole country is fighting,” one of my relatives told me. It was a throwaway remark, but it was the most apt thing I heard that weekend in Ukraine.

Dec 06, 2022

Cover Photo: A photograph of the actors Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey from the TV show "The Office." They are sitting on a couch and smiling at the camera. Fischer is holding a bucket of popcorn and kernels are in the air around them.

Arts & Culture | Television

TV Recaps Taught Me How to Write Criticism

They provided a blueprint by showing the critical apparatus in a container transparent enough that I could see the inner workings.

Dec 06, 2022

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES

Photo of Anna Qu with the cover of "Made in China"

Online | Nonfiction, Memoir | Workshop

The Online Memoir Generator: 12 Months to a Full Draft

Catapult online classes: Mila Jaroniec, The Online Novel Generator: 12 Months to a Full Draft, Fiction, Novel, Workshop

Online | Fiction, Novel | Workshop

The Online Novel Generator: 12 Months to a Full Draft

Catapult online classes: Zeyn Joukhadar, 4-Week Online Novel Seminar: How to Structure a Novel, Novel, Seminar

Online | Novel | Seminar

4-Week Online Novel Seminar: How to Structure a Novel

Catapult online classes: Mike Scalise, 4-Week Nonfiction Seminar: The Everyday Memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, Seminar

Online | Memoir, Nonfiction | Seminar

4-Week Nonfiction Seminar: The Everyday Memoir

Photo of Julian Delgado Lopera with the cover of "Fiebre Tropical"

Online | Fiction | Seminar

4-Week Fiction Seminar: Generating Voice

Julián Delgado Lopera

Graphic image saying "Reading Queer Books in Translation as Writers" with cover images of "La Bastarda," "Cereus Blooms at Night," "Last Night in Nuuk," and "In the Face of Death We Are Equal"

Online | Fiction | Reading Group

4 Weeks of Reading Queer Books in Translation as Writers

Photo of Shaina Phenix with the logos for "The Offing," "West Branch," "Shenandoah," and "Puerto Del Sol"

Online | Poetry | Seminar

4-Week Poetry Seminar: Writing the Beasts that Haunt Us

Photo of Nat Mesnard with the cover of "Business Wizards!"

Online | Fiction, Open-Genre | Intensive

Interactive Fiction Incubator: 12 Months to a Released Game

Conversations

Don’t Write Alone | Interviews

Hilton Als Is Finding Language for the Inexpressible

In this conversation with Isabella Vega, Als discusses his new book ‘My Pinup,’ the nature of desire, and the vulnerability of writing.

Nov 08, 2022

Cover Photo: This header image has a picture of Cheryl Strayed sitting in a chair on the left hand side and a cover of her newest book, TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS, on the right hand side.

Don’t Write Alone | Columns

How’s the Writing Going, Cheryl Strayed?

“I love writing. I really do. Even though I often hate it at various points in the process. Learning to accept that has been so important to me.”

Nov 22, 2022

Cover Photo: This header image shows headshots of Kavita Das, Gaiutra Bahadur, and Gabrielle Bellot, along with the book cover of Craft and Conscience

Don’t Write Alone | Interviews

The Risks, Realities, and Rewards of Writing About Social Issues

A roundtable with Kavita Das, the author of ‘Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues,’ and contributors Gaiutra Bahadur and Gabrielle Bellot.

Nov 28, 2022

Arts & Culture

Cover Photo: Photograph via Finji

Playing ‘Tunic’ Reminds Me How to Approach Sickness and Recovery

Cover Photo: A screenshot of Chris Farley from a Saturday Night Live sketch. He is standing in a living room, wearing a checkered blazer, tie, and heavy black glasses, and leaning over to speak to someone emphatically.

Chris Farley Taught Me to Laugh and to Grieve

Cover Photo: A screenshot of the actor Matthew Morrison from the show Glee, playing the drama teacher Will Schuester. He is wearing a checkered shirt and a sweater vest and has his hands spread out in an enthusiastic gesture while smiling.

Why Pop Culture Loves the Toxic Drama Teacher Trope

Craft Books from Catapult

Catapult | Creative Writing | Criticism | Reference

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison

Catapult | nonfiction

Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

Catapult

Body Work by Melissa Febos

Catapult | short stories

Best Debut Short Stories 2022 edited by Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers

Columns

Cover Photo: A screenshot of a female android from the film EX MACHINA. She is standing next to a mirror and looking away from the camera. Her neck and scalp show exposed wiring around her face.

Columns | Women Watching Horror Films

Do Female Androids Dream of Rebellion?

There is something revolutionary in their will to be free.

Heather O'Neill

Nov 23, 2022

Cover Photo: An image of trees

Columns | Science | Mother Of All Messes

On Mother Trees: What Old-Growth Trees Taught Me About Parenting

I was helpful, but unlike the giving tree, I was not entirely happy.

Nov 17, 2022

Cover Photo: an image of the actors Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo from the film '13 Going on 30': they're dancing!

Columns | I’ll Have What She’s Having

‘13 Going on 30’ Didn’t Prepare Me to Be Thirty, Flirty, and Striving

Weren’t your thirties supposed to be the time when “real adulthood” begins? What if, instead of thriving, you’re striving?

Nov 08, 2022

Places

Cover Photo: A GIF of a figure standing silhouetted at the end of an alley, scratching their head as if bemused. Around them, a dense bright wall of billboards and signs rise up on either side, flashing words like "Hey" and "Hurry" and "Act Now" and "Sale" in bright, garish letters.

Why Advertising Feels Like a Form of Urban Pollution

Cover Photo: Photograph by Eduardo Velazco Guart/Unsplash

Revenge Travel Helped Me Learn to Manage My Anxiety

Cover Photo: Photograph by Darren Lawrence/Unsplash

Reading Joan Didion Taught Me How to Not Write About Hawaiʻi

Poetry

Cover Photo: This photograph looks through golden grasses in a prairie as the sun sets, washing the field in orange light.

Catapult | Poetry

RATIONING SWEETGRASS

a steadfast soul-birth, tried and true / this is where you sing creation into being

Sep 22, 2022

Cover Photo: Photograph by Lucia Macedo/okeykat/Unsplash

Catapult | Poetry

Complicit Poem

When was the last time you chose / a glass of pinot over fair pay?

Sep 13, 2022

Cover Photo: Illustration by Sirin Thada for Catapult

Catapult | Poetry

GET FUCKED & DIE! Poetica

Though, no man can disappoint me / as much as the body I was / born into. Kidding, obvi. I’m Chilling!

Aug 30, 2022

Fiction

Cover Photo: An illustration of a hotel room, with clothing strewn about the floor; out the window, a UFO flies by

Fiction | Short Story

Room 105 at the Ramada on Sundays

Mary decided then and there that Harold would do. She missed skin on skin. She missed letting go.

Rebecca Ackermann

Dec 02, 2022

Cover Photo: An image of two adults looking at a girl on the swings

Fiction | Short Story

Give A Little

A sticky silence befalls the house for many weeks.

Nov 18, 2022

Cover Photo: This is a colorful illustration of a Black woman sitting in a blue chair with a child on her lap. The child's dress has American flags on it. There are two plants on either side of the chair and the drawing has many patterns.

Fiction | Short Story

The Americanization of Kambili

I hissed the words at her. “This, your America, it will kill you.”

Nov 04, 2022