Catapult

Cover Photo: Production still via A24

Culture | Health | Movies

Dev Patel in ‘The Green Knight’ Helped Me Manage My OCD

Many times I could have said the same as Gawain, terrified in the face what was to come, “I’m not ready. I’m not ready yet.”

Nov 23, 2021

Cover Photo: A young girl in rehearsals for an acting exercise, kneeling as if in prayer

Columns | Ghost Light

Waiting for Godot as an Impatient Schoolgirl

This was a time in my life when I believed fervently in a loving God, when I wanted to be obedient, and obedience meant waiting.

Lindsey Trout Hughes

Nov 22, 2021

Cover Photo: A silhouetted photo of a long-haired person raising their arm to write mathematical equations on a glowing whiteboard.

Columns | Bell Ringers

Why Don’t American Schools Value Creativity?

High school almost crushed my dream of being a writer. Now, as an educator, I’m trying to be the teacher I never had.

Erin Crosby-Eckstine

Nov 22, 2021

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES

Catapult online classes: Poupeh Missaghi, 2-Day Online Translation Seminar: Learn from Translators, Translation, Seminar

Online | Translation | Seminar

2-Day Online Translation Seminar: Learn from Translators

Poupeh Missaghi

Catapult online classes: Daniel Allen Cox, 1-Day Nonfiction Intensive: When is an Essay Ready to Submit?, Nonfiction, Intensive

Online | Nonfiction | Intensive

1-Day Nonfiction Intensive: When is an Essay Ready to Submit?

Daniel Allen Cox

Catapult online classes: Threa Almontaser, 1-Day Online Generative Poetry Seminar: The Family as Inspiration and Obstacle, Poetry, Seminar

Online | Poetry | Seminar

1-Day Online Generative Poetry Seminar: The Family as Inspiration and Obstacle

Threa Almontaser

Catapult online classes: David O'Neill, 2-Day Online Magazine Master Class, Publishing, Master Class

Online | Publishing | Master Class

2-Day Online Magazine Master Class

Catapult online classes: Destiny Birdsong, 6-Week Online Poetry Workshop: Say It How? Playing Fast & Loose with Poetic Forms, Poetry, Workshop

Online | Poetry | Workshop

6-Week Online Poetry Workshop: Say It How? Playing Fast & Loose with Poetic Forms

Destiny Birdsong

Catapult online classes: Frances Badalamenti , 2-Week Online Nonfiction Intensive: Writing the Pandemic Personal Essay, Nonfiction, Intensive

Online | Nonfiction | Intensive

2-Week Online Nonfiction Intensive: Writing the Pandemic Personal Essay

Frances Badalamenti

Catapult online classes: Caroline Shannon Karasik, 1-Day Online Nonfiction Seminar: Writing Pitches that Land Bylines, Nonfiction, Seminar

Online | Nonfiction | Seminar

1-Day Online Nonfiction Seminar: Writing Pitches that Land Bylines

Caroline Shannon Karasik

Catapult online classes: Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, 5-Week Online Generative Poetry Workshop: Present Ecopoetics, Poetry, Workshop

Online | Poetry | Workshop

5-Week Online Generative Poetry Workshop: Present Ecopoetics

Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

Don’t Write Alone

Cover Photo: This image shows a tiny figurine of a person sitting on top of a pile of gold coins. They are reading a book with their legs crossed.

Don’t Write Alone | Columns

Book Contracts: Let’s Talk Money

As part of our Money Week series, literary agent Kate McKean shares the first installment of her column on book contracts, this one addressing advances, payouts, and royalties.

Sep 16, 2021

Cover Photo: This photograph shows two people looking at some contracts on a table. One person is adding their signature with a pen.

Don’t Write Alone | Columns

Book Contracts: Let’s Talk Rights

In the second installment of her column, Kate McKean tells us all about the rights and subrights that could appear in your contract when you sell your book to a publisher.

Oct 26, 2021

Cover Photo: This photograph shows a woman looking at a computer screen in frustration, with her hands on her head. Next to her head are three bright yellow exclamation points, communicating surprise and exasperation.

Don’t Write Alone | Columns

Book Contracts: Let’s Talk Surprises

In the final installment of her column, Kate McKean tells us about the things authors don’t expect to be in a book contract.

Nov 23, 2021

Culture

Cover Photo: Promotional photo via DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Television

Not All Heroes Wear Capes: Unraveling the Myth of the Black Supermom

Ravynn K. Stringfield

Cover Photo: A photograph of the actress Emma Roberts playing the role of Madison Montgomery in American Horror Story: Coven. Roberts is blonde and wearing black sunglasses and a black dress. She holds a lit cigarette between her fingers.

Lessons On Camp and Queerness from ‘American Horror Story’

Michael Colbert

Cover Photo: An illustration of a cityscape, borrowing elements of both Miami and Havana

Seeing Cuba from a Parking Lot in Miami

New from Catapult Books

Catapult | fiction

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

Catapult | nonfiction

Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

Catapult | fiction

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore

Catapult | fiction

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor

Catapult | short stories

Catapult | memoir

Now Beacon, Now Sea: A Son's Memoir by Christopher Sorrentino

Catapult | fiction

Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN America Dau Prize edited by Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers

Catapult | memoir

Made in China by Anna Qu

Columns

Cover Photo: Photograph by Artem Ivanchencko/Unsplash

Columns | Gold Stars

To Every Woman Who Spent Her Twenties Apologizing

I squeezed myself in around other people’s priorities and problems, all the while saying: Take up all the room you want. I will make myself fit.

Rainesford Stauffer

Nov 18, 2021

Cover Photo: An image of a strip mall

Columns | San Fernando Valley

Home Is Where the Strip Malls Are

Our relationships with these business owners dotted the San Fernando Valley from strip mall to strip mall.

Nov 17, 2021

Cover Photo: A doctor's office with an empty, thin office bed with a white cloth in front of a large, white MRI machine.

Columns | Dis/Fluent

I Donated My Stuttering Brain to Science

As much as I hated being told that my stutter was “all in my head,” I liked being reminded that it was localized in my brain.

Nov 17, 2021

Books

Cover Photo: An image of The Phantom Tollbooth’s cover

The Transportive Power of ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’

Anya Jaremko-Greenwold

Cover Photo: crop of comic book cover illustration of Riri WIlliams, aka Ironheart

How I Became a Scholar of Black Girl Fantasy

Ravynn K. Stringfield

Cover Photo: a grey-brown bronze statue of Michel de Montaigne, depicted here as an aging man with a bald head, a mustache, and short beard, wearing a neck ruff, robes, and a chain of office

My Father, Montaigne, and the Art of Living

Ann Tashi Slater

Poetry

Cover Photo: Illustration by Sirin Thada for Catapult

Catapult | Poetry

playing the dozens with loneliness

your lonely ain’t alone if it’s waiting for him

Nov 10, 2021

Cover Photo: An image of a man walking surrounded by birds, books, flowers and other joys

Catapult | Poetry

Let Me Show You

oh, how my little joys have saved me

Oct 13, 2021

Cover Photo: illustration of a front porch in the evening, with three different generations represented by a chair, a rocking chair, and toys scattered on the porch, with windchimes in the foreground and a school building visible in the distance

Catapult | Poetry

When your friend tells you: “these kids

at night, when i’m outside and / the wind shakes the chimes, it sounds like the bell

Sep 14, 2021

Fiction

Cover Photo: A universe of tarot cards as a woman opens the lovers tarot card up like a door

Fiction | Short Story

Minor Arcana

I can twist any set of cards to say that.

Nov 19, 2021

Cover Photo: This illustration shows two people running down what looks like a southern California street. There are palm trees in the background and zombie grizzly bears, covered in purple gore, are chasing them down the block. The whole illustration has a purple overtone.

Fiction | Short Story

Mess You Up

When you intentionally hurt the ones you love most, you leave behind a demon you cannot kill.

Nov 12, 2021

Cover Photo: An image of a woman getting into a mikveh

Fiction | Short Story

Zochreini

What it was was I wondered if I had the right to call it an assault.

Nov 05, 2021