Selected Reading
An archive of all that’s available online from The New Territory. Shop our back issues for more.
Small Town, Big City
Rob Roensch recasts the coming-of-age tale deep in the Midwest in his third book and debut novel, In the Morning, The City Is the Prairie. Matt, a college dropout, can only cycle through his second shift at the local Costco, stalling out his life, relationships and...
“Live As A Woman”
On my 17th birthday, in a small Michigan town much like the one depicted in The Waters, I sat between my grandmothers as they reminded me that each of them had married at 17. Of course, one of them laughed, she hadn’t stayed married for long. I knew this; she had left...
Paul Vasey – Michigan–Ontario
Crossing the border, over and again, compelled by visa regulations, connecting with Vasey’s connection to the river but envying his obliviousness to the barrier.
John G. Niehardt – Branson, Missouri
Best known as a Nebraska poet, Niehardt’s three decades in Branson are marked only by a small boulder with a bronze plaque, sitting on the corner between the Koi Garden Plaza strip mall and the Branson Visitors Center.
Michael Martone – LaPorte County, Indiana
Blending fact and fiction across the ordinary landscapes of northern Indiana. Literary Landscapes by Dawn Burns.
Albert Goldbarth – Wichita, Kansas
Ice skating on the Arkansas River, learning poetry and grief from a venerable teacher, finally finding an elusive line. #LiteraryLandscapes by Amy Barnes.
José Olivarez – Calumet City, Illinois
José Olivarez & Calumet City—maps might make the world legible, but poetry reveals “the little cracks in the totality.” Literary Landscapes by Ava Tomasula y Garcia.
On Sunflowers, and Hope, in Times of Drought
On feeling parched in Minnesota.
Toni Morrison – Cleveland, Ohio
Euclid Ave mural—on Black women lifting up one another, because as Morrison said, “the function of freedom is to free someone else.”
Toni Morrison – Chesapeake Bay, Maryland
Driving along the Bay, trying to experience the place concretely, seeing the links between past and present, proximate and distant.
Toni Morrison – Lorain, Ohio
Toni Morrison’s childhood home—Black American resilience amidst the shared, cruel landscapes of white supremacy in Lorain, OH.
Toni Morrison – West Point, New York
Speaking to Plebes, Morrison makes “the auditorium, alive with the resonance of storytelling,” a space of racial belonging.
Toni Morrison – Lorain, Ohio
Lakeview Park—exploring the traumas experienced by young Black girls in The Bluest Eye and reclaiming the park as a space for healing.
Bienvenido Santos – Wichita, Kansas
Bienvenido Santos & Ablah Library—seeing ghosts in the palimpsest of Wichita State University.
William Inge – Independence, Kansas
William Inge & Riverside Park—a picnic next to the Verdigris River, in real life and on stage.
Sarah Smarsh – Murdock, Kansas
Sarah Smarsh & rural Kingman County—the soil of the Kansas prairie and the complex, contradictory stories we tell about ourselves.
Miriam Davis Colt – Allen County, Kansas
Miriam Davis Colt & the Vegetarian Settlement Company—choosing what to carry and what to leave behind.
Ben Lerner – Topeka, Kansas
Ben Lerner & Topeka High School—a teenage debate champion looks down on generations of high school students.
Jotham Meeker – Franklin County, Kansas
Jotham Meeker & the California Road—migrant traces at the Ottawa Mission cemetery.
Truman Capote – Garden City, Kansas
Truman Capote & Garden City, KS—new to town to research In Cold Blood, Capote and Harper Lee are invited to Christmas dinner.
Ron Wilson – Manhattan, Kansas
Ron Wilson & Lazy T Ranch—the Poet Laureate of Kansas talking poetry and connection with the state’s Poet Lariat.
Nellie Maxey – Kinsley, Kansas
Nellie Maxey & Sod House Museum—moving cross-country to Kinsley, KS, 100 years apart.
Niki Smith – Junction City, Kansas
Niki Smith & Rock Springs Ranch—a children’s librarian on the healing possibilities of 4-H camp, in both real life and graphic novels.
Is This the World We Really Want?
Art, Tech and Queer coming-of-middle-age in Forget I Told You This
A Beauty Parlor, a Movie Theater and a Bunch of Sofas
The intimate literary spaces of The Unbound Book Festival
Friendly Folk at the Oddball Hoedown Contra Dance
A tradition based on socializing starts to bring Kansas citians back together
A Complicated Inheritance
Family, fortune and fracking on the frontier
Subversion and Enchantment
Thrilling new fairy tales for a contemporary readership
Restless in Spirit, Rootless in Place
Searching to belong in a world on the brink
Bringing Us Home
Somebody Somewhere revels in quiet regionality on one of tv’s biggest networks
Forever in Stages of Becoming
8 stories on intimacy, magic and desire
Slugs for the Next Generation
Snail watching may be the hobby you never knew you needed
A Minnesota Sound
The Ides of Dessa.