Catapult

Cover Photo: Photograph by Laura Chouette/Unsplash

Columns | Focus Group Archives

I Traded My Image for Money, Now I Want it Back

The largest archive of footage of myself, ages twenty-three to thirty-years-old, never belonged to me but is owned by brands.

Jan 21, 2021

Cover Photo: the cast of the show 'Freaks and Geeks' in front of a row of orange lockers

Columns | Wander, Woman

Rewatching ‘Freaks and Geeks’ in a Polarized America

For all the pain, there is also beauty in the margins those outside of them may never understand.

Gabrielle Bellot

Jan 19, 2021

Cover Photo: An illustration in dark blues, black, and yellow. A ballerina is shown onstage, progressing through a spin. The glitter on her black leotard looks like stars against the background.

Fiction | Short Story

Rolling Blackouts

Social Security sends us checks every month to say sorry about our mom. A thousand sorries for me and a thousand sorries for Vivian, and we accept them all.

Melanie Carlstad

Jan 15, 2021

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES

Catapult online classes: Taylor Larsen, 12-Week Online Novel Draft Generator, Novel, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Novel, Fiction | Workshop

12-Week Online Novel Draft Generator

Catapult online classes: Jean Kyoung Frazier, 8-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Finding Your Opening, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

8-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Finding Your Opening

Jean Kyoung Frazier

Catapult online classes: Anna Qu, 8-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Beyond the "Me" in Memoir, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

8-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Beyond the "Me" in Memoir

Catapult online classes: Sharlene Teo, 6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Building & Sustaining Emotional Suspense, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Building & Sustaining Emotional Suspense

Catapult online classes: Tabitha Blankenbiller, 6-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Writing The Pop Culture Essay, Nonfiction, Workshop

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Nonfiction Workshop: Writing The Pop Culture Essay

Tabitha Blankenbiller

Catapult online classes: Anna Godbersen, 6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Writing Young Adult Fiction, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Writing Young Adult Fiction

Catapult online classes: Ariel Lewiton, 6-Week Online Open-Genre Generative Workshop: Finding New Forms, Open-Genre, Workshop

Online | Open-Genre | Workshop

6-Week Online Open-Genre Generative Workshop: Finding New Forms

Catapult online classes: Anna Dorn, 8-Week Online Novel Workshop, Fiction, Novel, Workshop

Online | Fiction, Novel | Workshop

8-Week Online Novel Workshop

On Writing

Cover Photo: An image of a type writer and hands typing as hot pink flames are ablaze in the background

People | On Writing | Debut

When There Is No Right Way to Heal

The details of those poems may be his first inkling that I know what he did.

Destiny Birdsong

Nov 12, 2020

Cover Photo: An image of a woman reading half of her face in a shadow as the light shines in through the window

Culture | On Writing | Turning Points

Finding an “I” in Indian Literature

It turns out all I want to find in literature, whether I write or read it, is a little piece of myself.

Sep 17, 2020

Cover Photo: An illustration of two figures in a tender embrace, cuddled up on a couch

On Writing | Debut

Writing Sex with Women, by Women, for Women

People have sex. Women have sex. It would feel irresponsible to censor or smooth over this part of their (and our) lives.

Emily Hashimoto

Sep 14, 2020

Notes From Class

Cover Photo: This photograph is mostly a bright blue sky with scattered white clouds. The bright green field below is only shown as a sliver, so the photo feels expansive as a sunny day

Writing Our Pandemic Stories: May & June

Catapult Classes

Cover Photo: This photograph is of a dog, a white pit bull mix, who is grinning happily into golden hour evening sun in a field of orange poppies

Writing Our Pandemic Stories: April & May

Catapult Classes

Cover Photo: In this photograph, a couple stands on the porch of a modest, square, brick family home. She wears a mask and he wears a bandana over his face. The grass is green, but the trees are bare in the background, as if spring has only just begun.

Writing Our Pandemic Stories: March & April

Catapult Classes

New from Catapult Books

Catapult | fiction

What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron

Catapult | nonfiction | Racism | social science

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

Catapult | fiction

High as the Waters Rise: A Novel by Anja Kampmann, translated by Anne Posten

anthology | Catapult | fiction | short stories

Best Debut Short Stories 2020: The PEN America Dau Prize

Catapult | memoir

The Baddest Bitch in the Room: A Memoir by Sophia Chang

Catapult | fiction

Black Card: A Novel by Chris L. Terry

Catapult | memoir

In the Country of Women: A Memoir by Susan Straight

Catapult | memoir

Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts by Jessica J. Lee

Columns

Cover Photo: An image of the farm simulator video game Stardew Valley; a farmer is picking melons from their farm, surrounded by trees, animals, and produce

Columns | Controller

How to Live Under Capitalism, According to ‘Stardew Valley’

‘Stardew Valley’ doesn’t challenge capitalism by trying to escape from it, but by teaching a lesson on generosity.

Jan 14, 2021

Cover Photo: Illustration by Cori Lin for Catapult

Columns | Family | The Monster In The Mirror

The Three Corpses

From the beginning, I knew that terror is a god. But now, I also believe that what might sound like a death rattle is merely the echo of ancestral song.

Jami Nakamura Lin

Jan 13, 2021

Cover Photo: In this photograph, we see a yellow U-Bahn train pulling into a Berlin platform. There are a few people standing on the warmly lit platform, but not many.

Columns | Binding In Berlin

Stumbling Stones

As a queer descendant of Holocaust survivors, I knew my first time visiting Berlin—a hub of queer life and Holocaust memorials—would not be easy.

Jan 13, 2021

Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: A Minneapolis mural and memorial honor George Floyd, killed by police on May 25, 2020. The mural is by artists Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, and Greta McLain. Flowers, candles, and signs left by mourners in the foreground.

Living in Dread of the Next Name We’ll Chant

Gabrielle Bellot

Cover Photo: image of a medieval plague doctor walking along a dirt road next to a lake blanketed in mist

Why Do We Read Plague Stories?

Gabrielle Bellot

Cover Photo: photograph of a partial side and corner of an empty wrestling ring in the fading light

The Curious Language of Grief

Gabrielle Bellot

Poetry

Cover Photo: Illustration by Sirin Thada for Catapult

Catapult | Poetry

Blood Moon

She is determined to follow the smoke—a hymn / for what’s gone missing.

Jan 12, 2021

Cover Photo: illustration of two men embracing under a Japanese maple tree in the foreground; behind them is a Nagoya street filled with shops and cafes and a shrine, with mountains in the distance

Catapult | Poetry

I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies

if you believe me to be your enemy know this I accept

Ryan Dzelzkalns

Jan 05, 2021

Cover Photo: A starry illustration of a woman looking up into the cosmos, nude, stripes from window blinds stretched across her body and into the universe.

Catapult | Poetry

First Nude

How to put this: I’m alive.

Shira Erlichman

Dec 14, 2020

Fiction

Cover Photo: illustration of a farmers market, with brightly colored tents in a line stretching into the distance; in the nearest tent, under a pink canvas, a woman in a blue shirt is selling microgreens to another woman in a black sunhat and long dress

Fiction | Short Story

Up and Out and Gone

They used to launch shuttles from the town, but that was all over now. Space had become derivative and unimportant and old.

Jan 08, 2021

Cover Photo: In this photograph, we see blue sky and white cottony clouds reflecting off a tall, glassy office building. The imagine is divided into a checkerboard because of the window frames.

Fiction | Short Story

Support Group

The blisters came two summers ago, after college. The biopsy came back inconclusive, so every month I go back to the office for a check-up.

Camille Jacobson

Jan 08, 2021

Cover Photo: You see the back of a person in a vibrant yellow shirt sitting at one of many identical cubicles. They are surrounded by tall figures—silhouettes draped in shadow—who lean down and stroke their back. The perspective, elevated, suggests that you are one of these ominous figures.

Fiction | Short Story

Bring Your Lover to Work Day

We nibble at the sandwiches and make stilted conversation with one another’s better halves. The managers loom in the corner.

Dec 18, 2020