Publisher’s Note: Art, Beauty, and Passion
By Will Hearst
Rethinking Prisons
By Lydia Lee
Poetry: “Proof” • “Preface to a Photograph—Delano, CA 1976”
By James Cagney
Watching Birds as They Watch Us
By Jason G. Goldman
Sister Aimee Is Born Again
By Carla Blank
Tragedy on the Pacific Crest Trail
By Louise Farr
Alta Picks: Fisherpoets Gathering • Salmon Watching • AIR/LIGHT
End-of-Life Hymns
By Elaine Lee
Special Section: A Year Like No Other
Photographers across the West capture 2020
A House of Refuge—or Horrors?
By Julia Flynn Siler • Photos by Penni Gladstone
Crying for the Oakland Blues
By Ishmael Reed • Photos by Jason Henry
Excerpts: Winter Reads
Introduction
By David L. Ulin
A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky
By Lynell George
“1181 Durfee Avenue”
By Michael Jaime-Becerra
America is Not the Heart
By Elaine Castillo
Three Questions for Elaine Castillo
By John McMurtrie
“My Father's Frontal Lobe”
By Victoria Change
Desert Notebooks
By Ben Ehrenreich
Unforgetting
By Roberto Lovato
“The History of Fire”
By Linda Hogan
The Sellout
By Paul Beatty
Three Questions for Paul Beatty
By John McMurtrie
“The Bath”
By Karen Tei Yamashita
“Try Not to Die”
By Ken Layne
Southland
By Nina Revoyr
Three Questions for Nina Revoyr
By John McMurtrie
"Recollections of My Nonexistence"
By Rebecca Solnit
“L.A.’s Black Woodstock”
By Mike Davis and Jon Wiener
The Myth of the Mythic West
By John Freeman
POETRY: “Portrait of a Bracero as José Olivares”
By John Olivares Espinoza
Is Copperopolis a Total Crock?
By Lydia Lee • Photos by Christie Hemm Klok
Murder on Crater Lake
By Julian Smith • Illustrations by Mark Smith
Archiving Black Film History
By Robert Ito
FICTION: “Larry’s Biggest Mistake”
By Carribean Fragoza • Illustrations by Victor Juhasz
A Woeful Road Trip
By Lydia Kiesling
