James Parker
Turned On, his 1998 biography of the punk-rock performer Henry Rollins, has been described as “breathlessly brilliant” (New Musical Express) and “a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress” (Feed.com). He was previously a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix, where he won New England Newspapers and Press Association awards for his reporting on history and religious issues, and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism. In 2012, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his columns at The Atlantic. In 2017–18 he was the Institute of Liberal Arts journalism fellow at Boston College. Since 2011, Parker has been running the Black Seed Writers Group—a weekly writing workshop for homeless, transitional, and recently housed writers–and editing The Pilgrim, a literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.
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Serge Picard / Agence VU / Redux A World Without Martin Amis
The small, cold shock of loneliness upon hearing of the great British comic writer’s death
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Writing Odes
When the universe gives you a gift, send a thank-you note.
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Adrian Dennis / AFP / Getty ‘Don’t You Think This Is a Bit Silly?’
Among the new king’s subjects on a soggy coronation weekend
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Illustration by Oliver Munday / The Atlantic. Sources: … Call of the Wild
The enduring appeal of watching human beings attempt to master the Alaskan backcountry
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Bananas
Their cartoon yellowness, their absurd curvature, their fragility, their cordial blandness
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Nicknames
What yours says about you
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Lauren Tamaki The Freakish Powers of Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey
The id of California—the id of America—is strong in both of them.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Swearing
A well-turned curse can remind you of the power of language.
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Getty; The Atlantic All the Pretty Republicans
If Cormac McCarthy interpreted the humiliations of Kevin McCarthy
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Mood Swings
If you don’t like me now, just give it an hour.
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Daniele Castellano T. S. Eliot Saw All This Coming
One hundred years after the publication of The Waste Land, its vision has never been more terrifying.
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Elliot Erwitt / Magnum Ode to the French Baguette
Intangible in cultural heritage, tangible in my mouth
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Mohamed Farag / Getty; The Atlantic Ode to Not Watching the World Cup
This is an event of such astoundingly obvious wrongness that doing the right thing is easy.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Pull-Ups
It’s you versus you.
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Photo-illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Michel Ginfray / … ABBA’s Triumphant Return
Take a chance on them.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Crying Babies
WaaaAAAaaaaaAaaHhh!
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Olivia Arthur / Magnum Ode to King Charles III
A poem for the new monarch
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being Read To
Bedtime stories aren’t just for children.
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Illustration by Paul Spella. Source: Bettmann / Getty; … The Unlovable, Irresistible John Donne
The Elizabethan poet and divine was a mystic in bed and a mystic in the pulpit.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being in a Band
I can’t believe how good we sound.
