Pen International: Creative Non-Fiction

People who want to know what trees to plant for a changing climate sometimes have trouble getting a clear answer, in part because the best answer scientists can offer right now is: plants lots of kinds of trees.

Invasive trees have demonstrated their adaptive mettle, so it shouldn't come as a shock that they are likely to outperform natives as climate change alters growing conditions. But according to the U.S. Forest Service, their competitive advantage is dramatic.

As more autonomous vehicles have taken to the roads, transportation expert Ben Pierce has begun to notice peculiar ways the roads should prepare for them.

Solar collectors being developed by Purdue Professor Rakesh Agrawal and his colleagues would capture ultraviolet and infrared light for energy production while letting visible light pass through to crops.

Aurora's Chris Urmson argued yesterday that self-driving cars remain a solution to the unacceptable number of fatalities and injuries caused by human-piloted cars.

There are four main problems in urban transportation that require four separate solutions, transit guru Jarret Walker said in Chicago in March, urging people to be wary of tech companies that claim to solve more than one problem at a time.

Autonomous vehicles could be a blessing or a disaster, and car sharing companies may hold the key.

A representative from AAA said Wednesday he wants to see fewer cars on the road, and executives from three major automobile manufacturers conceded that's inevitable.

The Congressional Research Service warned members of Congress last month that President Trump's import tariffs on solar panels could lead to retaliatory actions against the United States. The threat of retaliation has led to the repeal of import tariffs in the past.

Microgrids are developing without the services traditional utilities can offer, and investors seeking clean-energy plays may be pouring money into the new alternatives.

A Self Made of Words by Carl H. Klaus Iowa, 2013 Recently a Buddhist acquaintance suggested I read Simone Weil because of her work on attention. She writes, for example, that “Absolute undivided attention is prayer,” which lends a Buddhist flavor to her Judeo-Christian theology. Attention can be aimed at anything, after all, not necessarily […]

Since Roger Ebert died I’ve been watching the tribute writers struggle to express his contribution. At The Atlantic, Christopher Orr rightly describes Ebert as a movie enthusiast, but here’s the analysis that follows: “The movies he loved, he truly loved. And the movies he hated, he truly hated.” That’s so truly true Orr can reuse it for […]

It wasn’t the great science fiction novels, “Fahrenheit 451” or “The Martian Chronicles,” that most reflected Ray Bradbury’s life, but a play he wrote—”Something Wicked This Way Comes”— “It’s a metaphor for all of life,” Bradbury said of his play, which you may know better as a 1983 movie starring Jonathan Pryce, Jason Robards and […]

[capti on id=”attachment_2694″ align=”alignright” width=”300″ caption=”By fox_kiyo via flickr”][/caption] When we published the summer issue of Contrary two days ago, we had less than $2 in the bank. We’ve been scraping by since the recession hit, but this marked the first time we had published an issue without knowing how we’d pay for it. Scary, […]

Lauren Berlant speaking on media sensationalism? I couldn’ t miss that. So I found my way to the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center to have a listen. Only to find out I’d overlooked the comma between media and sensationalism. Lauren Berlant is an English professor at the University of Chicago, but that title can’t contain […]

Juliana Baggott wrote a smart and calm defense of the Osama bin Laden death celebration for NPR last week. Americans should be free to release their fear, she contends: their cheering shows they are paying attention, are emotionally invested, and are participating in an act of unity. She didn’t convince me, but she helped me […]

For a lifetime Mary Oliver has gently secluded herself, walked the woods, sent bottles out on the tide bearing simple messages that reconnect humanity to a beauty beyond us. Now we know why. In an interview with Maria Shriver Mary Oliver reveals she was sexually abused when very young, that with eroded trust she withdrew […]

I left the daily life of journalism at the turn of the Century, just before the daily life of journalism collapsed. That left me feeling a bit like Charlie Chaplin, who sold all his stocks in 1928. Since then I’ve maintained journalism as a practice more cyclically, and less cynically, focusing more on reporting and […]

The genius of James Fallows’ new piece in The Atlantic is that he takes some of the best values of traditional journalism—skepticism, research, fairness, eagerness to question authority and topple conventional wisdom—and he applies them to traditional journalism. He disputes the tediously common view that old journalism is better than new. Unless they are different from […]

Last week when my friend David Alm published his lament of digital publishing in these pages, I happened to be writing an introduction for a visiting writer. I recognized in my draft a soft rebuttal to David’s post, but I decided it had to complete its original mission before I could post it. This introduction […]