Selected Reading
An archive of all that’s available online from The New Territory. Shop our back issues for more.
A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock ‘n Roll
May’s Place: slow fashion with midwestern boots.
Seeds for the Next Generation
The poetry of Minari
Wrestling as Faith and Creed
A study of strength, grief and obsession
There is A Longing
10 TENDER, FIERCE STORIES THAT GIVE VOICE TO THE LAND
A Place That Defies Definition
“A place that transcends boundaries, that defies definition, a body that holds within it a multitude of identities.”
The Room is Not A Metaphor
“For seven years now the Fire Room has played host to intimate concert experiences for rock, rockabilly, blues, Americana, folk, alt-country and country music.”
Dispatches From the Heart of Fast-Food Nation
Unveiling the human condition through food in El Dorado Freddy’s
Consider the Carp
What one invasive fish reveals about the challenge of managing nature at huge scales
Time to Rebuild
Slim, lyrical memoir deconstructs our ideas of borders, connectedness and charitable aid.
Find Your Medicine and Use It
Music so sunny it may change your outlook.
Deceit in the Sunflower State
The first adult novel from Kansas City author Amy Engel
A Nest with a View
Even migrating birds need to nest. One mother’s reckoning with rootedness.
Intelligent Americana Fresh from Oklahoma
Watch out for twins bearing guitars. Annie Oakley’s live shows are as good as their namesake.
The Midwest, Revisited
Don’t be fooled by its slim size. The New Midwest packs a punch in regional literary criticism.
New Proverbs
Defiantly honest stories test the roots of this Kansas City honky tonker’s debut solo album.
An Epic Poet’s “Fatal Row” with “Ezrapoundism”
Biography of Black Elk Speaks author is an underdog story unafraid to show stark realities.
The Hooten Hollers
“Maybe it’s more accurate to say that John’s vocal cords are the conduits by which the ghosts of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf communicate.”
Bad Faith
“Wheeler’s characters bend and stretch their conceptions of self to fit these places and situations, dipping their feet in the often boiling waters of possibility.”
The Small-Town Midwest: Resilience and Hope in the Twenty-First Century
Couch’s book is a revitalization effort in itself. She writes to look forward, to focus on the good that’s coming for the region.
Two Roadmaps, One Planet
There are two diverging paths to handling environmental problems. Do we understand the solutions well enough to choose?
A Presidential Haunting
Chatty ghosts, departed sons make Saunders’ contribution to the Lincoln canon worth its words.
Authors to Themselves?
When the Ulrich Museum rolled out the (proverbial) shag carpet for a deep fake AI film and its making-of documentary
Non-believers Welcome
A Pilgrimage to Eternity gives words to doubt and wonder as Egan ponders what we lose when we distance ourselves from religion.
What a Concept: Hogs and History Abound on Wolf Hunter
Living folk heroes from southwest Missouri revive half-century-old tunes of their homeland
God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, and the Religious Right
“Barrett-Fox allows a group so widely despised to emerge as human and complicated like the rest of us.”
Peter H. Clark – St. Louis, Missouri
Clark, a Black socialist who had been collaborating with German radicals in Cincinnati since the days of abolitionism, was well prepared for relationship-building.
R. A. Lafferty – Tulsa, Oklahoma
R. A. Lafferty 1724 S. Trenton Ave.Tulsa, Oklahoma By Michael Helsem “Everything, including dreams, is meteorological.” – R. A. Lafferty, ”Narrow Valley” A couple of years ago, my wife and I were visiting my young niece and her husband in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they...
Sojourner Truth – Battle Creek, Michigan
Harmonia was biracial, socially lively (it was rumored to be a bastion of free love!), and included a store, a blacksmith shop, and a seminary.
Jim Harrison – Osceola County, Michigan
He believed that wandering the woods, studying birds, fishing, and a general curiosity for the natural world could “lift you out of your self-sunken mudbath, the violent mixture of hormones, injuries, melancholy, and dreams of a future you not only couldn’t touch but could scarcely see.”
Louis L’Amour – Jamestown, North Dakota
The most famous writer to ever come out of North Dakota never wrote anything that takes place there.
Thomas Hart Benton – Shell Knob, Missouri
Thomas Hart Benton Mark Twain National Forest Shell Knob, Missouri By Aaron Hadlow There is a burled oak tree that stands on the knuckle of a ridge finger behind my parent’s house in Shell Knob, Missouri. Despite its disfigurement, the oak is otherwise straight and...
Bonnie Jo Campbell – Comstock, Michigan
Bonnie Jo Campbell H House Comstock, Michigan By Lisa DuRose The Kalamazoo River flows right through the center of Comstock, Michigan, behind the library and township hall and the 24-hour gas station. Past Merrill Park where people feed bread to ducks. It floods every...
Hunter S. Thompson – Louisville, Kentucky
Hunter S. Thompson Churchill Downs Louisville, Kentucky By Charlie Cy In the spring of 1970, thirty-two-year-old writer Hunter S. Thompson returned to his hometown of Louisville to cover the 96th running of the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan’s Monthly. Less than 72 hours...