Catapult

Cover Photo: This illustration has a gray background and shows a blond women sitting at the top of a tottering pile of empty yogurt containers. She is holding a bowl and her hand it lifting a fresh spoonful up to her face.

People | Health | Bodies

All the Things I’ve Loved to Death

Am I ever going to know where I hope to escape to? I understand that I’m trying escape from reality, but I’m still not clear on what the destination is.

Jan 25, 2022

Cover Photo: A screenshot of Shirley Manson, the lead singer of Garbage, from their music video "Androgynous." Manson is sitting on the ground with slicked-back hair, wearing a shirt, tie and suit jacket with sheer tights and heeled boots.

Columns | Everyone Is Gay

“The Queerest of the Queer”: Listening to Garbage in the Nineties

I listened to the lead singer, Shirley Manson, play what I understood as masculine and feminine in the same hand.

Jan 24, 2022

Cover Photo: An illustration of two Asian women in dresses staring at each other at a gala from across the room, surrounded by rich white men and white women. The room is mostly dark, with beautiful chandeliers hanging down.

Fiction | Flash

Rich White Boys

I told myself I accepted his gala invite because I wanted to see what else they could get away with.

Jan 21, 2022

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES

Catapult online classes: Jubi Arriola-Headley, 6-Week Online Generative Poetry Workshop: Poetry in Conversation, Poetry, Workshop

Online | Poetry | Workshop

6-Week Online Generative Poetry Workshop: Poetry in Conversation

Jubi Arriola-Headley

Catapult online classes: Amanda Kallis, 6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Speculative Fiction, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Speculative Fiction

Catapult online classes: Peter Kispert, 6-Week Online Advanced Fiction Workshop: Discovering & Writing Powerful Voice, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Online Advanced Fiction Workshop: Discovering & Writing Powerful Voice

Catapult online classes: Emily Adrian, 4-Week Online Fiction Seminar: Characterization, Fiction, Seminar

Online | Fiction | Seminar

4-Week Online Fiction Seminar: Characterization

Catapult online classes: Caitlin Kunkel, 4 Weeks of Reading Modern Comic Lit as Writers Online, Fiction, Nonfiction, Reading Group

Online | Fiction, Nonfiction | Reading Group

4 Weeks of Reading Modern Comic Lit as Writers Online

Catapult online classes: Abeer Hoque, 2-Week Online Seminar: Writing Statements of Purpose & Applying for Grants & Residencies, Publishing, Open-Genre, Seminar

Online | Publishing, Open-Genre | Seminar

2-Week Online Seminar: Writing Statements of Purpose & Applying for Grants & Residencies

image of Kai Cheng Thom with the cover of her book I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE

Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

The Online Essay Generator: 12 Months to a Full Collection

Catapult online classes: Hannah Kingsley-Ma, 8-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Generating Voice, Fiction, Workshop

Online | Fiction | Workshop

8-Week Online Fiction Workshop: Generating Voice

Hannah Kingsley-Ma

Don’t Write Alone

Cover Photo: A photograph of a baker's hands over a pile of flour on a table. Grains of flour drift down from their hands into the pile. The table also contains some eggs, a whisk, and a bag of flour.

Don’t Write Alone | Writing Life

Publishing Your Debut Book Is Like Baking Croissants—Messy, But Worth It

Outside the publishing industry, I don’t think we spend enough time discussing the labor behind writing a book.

Pyae Moe Thet War

Oct 06, 2021

Cover Photo: A photo of an outdoor exercise class, shot form above. A group of people stand on a grassy rectangle and perform a coordinated move, surrounded by a perimeter of chairs.

Don’t Write Alone | Notes On Craft

Drafting a Personal Essay Is Like Stumbling Through a Dance

You can study all you want, but it’s only in the act of doing that you learn what’s right and what isn’t.

Lorraine Boissoneault

Nov 08, 2021

Cover Photo: Photograph by Ahmad Odeh/Unsplash

Don’t Write Alone | Notes On Craft

What If We Taught Writing the Way We Teach Acting?

Actors studied movement, script analysis, emotional connection, our bodies, our voices. In my writing MFA, we got . . . workshop.

Nov 10, 2021

Culture

Cover Photo: A promotional still from the animated Studio Ghibli film "Howl's Moving Castle." The still depicts a field in front of snow-capped mountains, with a large, ramshackle house on legs perched near the edge of the frame. In the field are small houses and a tiny shepherd herding a flock of sheep.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Characters Help Me Grieve My Chronic Illness

Lorraine Boissoneault

Cover Photo: An image of the author as a child sitting in a chair with her hands and legs crossed

The Pain of Losing Your First Language

Cover Photo: Promotional still via Marvel Studios

Zendaya is Not Your Mama’s Mary Jane

Ravynn K. Stringfield

New from Catapult Books

Catapult | memoir

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

Catapult | fiction

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

Catapult | fiction

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor

Catapult | short stories

Catapult | memoir

Made in China by Anna Qu

Catapult | fiction

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

Catapult | fiction

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore

Catapult | nonfiction

Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

Columns

Cover Photo: An image of Tiffany Young for one of her solo albums

Columns | From A K Pop Fan, With Love

Dear Tiffany, What Does It Mean to be ‘Korean Enough’?

In pretty much every K-pop group, there is the designated One From America.

Jan 20, 2022

Cover Photo: A photograph of the Las Vegas Strip lit up at night, featuring a dense network of hotels and casinos.

Columns | Hemlines

Becoming an “It Girl” in the Las Vegas Body-con Dress

The back was nothing but a web of elastic straps, and the front wasn’t low-cut as much as it was nonexistent.

Tabitha Blankenbiller

Jan 19, 2022

Cover Photo: A photograph of a white sculpted hand holding a white sculpted bottle, protruding from a white wall. Just below the neck of the bottle is a real wine glass, full of red wine, held by another sculpted white hand that protrudes from the wall.

Columns | Through The Grapevine

Who Can Afford to Make and Drink Wine?

If someone paid half a million for a single bottle of wine, how much did the grape harvesters earn making it?

Jan 12, 2022

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

Ode to Diabetes

When I got better I ate / attention, the praise for being alive. There is no praise now. A needle, / a sharp’s box, yellow asking me to slow down.

Jan 19, 2022

Cover Photo: An illustration of a mother watching her daughter in the bathroom

Catapult | Poetry

Haibun on the High Bun

everything shifts as she twists and spins her hair, lifting it to chignon. / So self-assured, as if the gesture were always hers

Dec 22, 2021

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

Fiction

Cover Photo: A dark blue, white, black, and white illustration of a husband (left) and wife (right). A white tornado swarms them, and the husband is losing blue pages from his head., slowly leaving her.

Fiction | Flash

Four Alternate Endings to a Six-Year Marriage

There’s a comfort to our clinging, to the familiarity of togetherness, where the pain is predictable and the pleasure enough.

Jan 14, 2022

Cover Photo: A black and white photograph of the Elmo the Muppet from Sesame Street; he is staring into the camera, a disbelieving expression on his furry features, presumably due to the antics of his friend Zoe and her pet rock Rocco

Fiction | Short Story

Elmo’s Struggle

I raised my eyes heavenwards, seeking strength in the blue expanse. Let Zoe have her foolish notions. I would not let Rocco trouble me today.

Jan 10, 2022

Cover Photo: This illustration shows two young women running and dancing down a city sidewalk. Cars are driving past them and all the light sources are blurry and bleeding, as if we are looking at the scene through a window streaked with rain. The girls' shadows on the building next to them have wolf heads.

Fiction | Short Story

City Wolf

The werewolf has been scheduling men from the app back-to-back every night—even on the days leading up to the full moon, though she knows she shouldn’t.

Jan 07, 2022