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"Letters in the Attic" is an excerpt (first full chapter) of the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize-winning novel Cupido Cupido, by Emily Grandy.

Letters in the Attic He puzzled over the old man’s odd behavior. Tossing the letters in the bin had, naturally enough, only served to pique his curiosity.      t Pearson International, passports in hand, Egg and his mother boarded a plane bound for the Bluegrass State. On American soil, they collected their rented ...

In this fascinating interview, Congress for New Urbanism Fellow Galina Tachieva chats with Benjamin Schneider, author of The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution.

Gathering Spaces: An Interview with Benjamin Schneider Truly public spaces, where protests and celebrations can take place. Subversive works of art. Neighborliness and in-person interaction. We can’t take these things for granted.   Introduction enjamin Schneider’s The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution is a remarkable acc...

Two strange and gorgeous new poems by Jennifer K. Sweeney, with audio: "Fairy Ring" and "Formation."

Two Poems by Jennifer K. Sweeney Fairy Ring Imagine your mother died and as she died she fed you and you grew up as she grew down and she was not even a she but a skytunnel deepdown plosive accordion of darkness and light but she so you can understand where you are in the space of this imagining       imagine her soil serpentin...

In her lovely lyric essay "Tendrils," Nancy Bell weaves science and memory, wonder and strangeness, dreams and possibilities.

Tendrils Just think: the world is full of this plant chatter, this invisible glow.    few weeks ago, I heard a podcast about how plants can feel things. They literally have a physical sense of touch like ours. Do you understand what I’m telling you here? They can feel when you touch them. The breathless ...

Congratulations to Annie Wenstrup, Chris Watkins, and Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey for winning the 2026 Terrain.org Editor’s Prizes in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction!

Annie Wenstrup, Chris Watkins, and Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey Win 2026 Terrain.org Editor’s Prize We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Terrain.org Editor’s Prizes, selected by poetry editor Derek Sheffield, nonfiction editor Elizabeth Dodd, fiction editor Pam Houston, and editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin. One prize of $500 per awardee is given annually in poetry, nonfiction, and fi...

Our newest ARTerrain Gallery is now live: Meditations on Geometries of Water: Summer Lake, by artist and writer Leah Wilson.

Meditations on Geometries of Water: Summer Lake    he interplay of irregular, natural shapes and regular, human-imposed geometries reveals our values, desires, and priorities as expressed in how we manipulate the land. Water, left to its own devices, creates ever-changing curving shapes and forms. While humans, in order to maximize efficiency, ...

John Balaban's "Crossing the Mekong Ferry, Reading the New Yorker" is the third of three poems from Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War reprinted in Terrain.org.

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One Poem by John Balaban   Crossing the Mekong Ferry, Reading the New Yorker August, 1968    Under the drilling sun, puttering past mud-tide mangrove swamps, the glossy cover struck my eye with its bursting yellow blossoms and grapevine leaves—nasturtiums or pumpkin flowers?—like those twining in tangles by our cotta...

Jaylan Salah Salman's "You Killed My Rosemary Garden" is the second of three poems from Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War reprinted in Terrain.org.

One Poem by Jaylan Salah Salman You Killed My Rosemary Garden Rosemary garden I planted my garden but the darkness came My garden evaporated white clouds fumes crack like crackling a dragon underneath a dome in a seashell but my garden of Rosemary Your feet trampled it that pain is greater than your anguish you are the brown, tarr...

Sean Mcclain Brown's "First Snow" is the first of three poems from Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War reprinted in Terrain.org.

One Poem by Sean Mclain Brown First Snow War has a shadow that lingers, like weather, like today, the cold crowded peaks and ferocious grasses in confusion. A profusion of frost and flowers searching, searching, their hearts fibrillating like a sparrow in a cat’s maw, and the earth, skin like granite, flecked by knots of new g...

Teresa Mei Chuc pens a guest editorial about the new anthology Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War, which she co-edited.

War and Its Impact on Non-Human Life A new poetry anthology re-centers the conversation on war to destruction of the environment.         was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam and fled my Vietnamese homeland in a boat with my mother and brother shortly after the American war. We spent three and a half months in the East Sea before bei...