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A celebration of the latest installment of John Freeman’s acclaimed literary journal, featuring some of today’s top writers on the hope and pain of the ever-changing present. Writer and Editor Extraordinaire, John Freeman returns to ALOUD in celebration of the latest installment of his acclaimed literary journal, Freeman’s. This biannual publication explores the subject of change and our ultimate survival (our resilience!), featuring the work of writers Rick Bass, Lana Bastašić, and Lina Mounzer.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced many of us to reimagine our homes, work, and relationships, and adapt to a new way of life–one with far fewer possibilities for interaction. And yet, in this period of intense isolation, we’ve faced dilemmas which are nearly universal. How to love, care for aging parents, find a home, attend to a planet in flux, and fight for justice. This vast range of experiences is captured by our greatest storytellers, essayists, and poets, in the new issue of Freeman’s: Change.
John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman’s and the author and editor of ten books, including Dictionary of the Undoing, The Park, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and, with Tracy K. Smith, There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Orion, and has been translated into over twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at NYU and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.
Rick Bass, the author of thirty books, won the Story Prize for his collection For a Little While and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his memoir Why I Came West. His most recent book is Fortunate Son: Selected Essays from the Lone Star State. His work, which has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and the Paris Review, among many other publications, and has been anthologized numerous times in The Best American Short Stories, has also won multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes, as well as NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Bass lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley, where he is a founding board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council.
Lana Bastašić is a Yugoslav-born writer. Her first novel, Catch the Rabbit, won the European Union Prize in Literature in 2020 and was published in English in 2021. Mliječni zubi (Milk Teeth), a collection of short stories, was published in Serbo-Croatian in 2020.
Lina Mounzer is a writer and translator living in Beirut. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, 1843, Literary Hub, and Bidoun, as well as in Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of writing on climate change and inequality.
