New Stories All Stories
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8

All stories

Bathed in purplish-blue light, musicians with guitars, microphones, and a drum kit perform on stage. Behind them hangs a black, blue, and white flag adorned with the band’s name.
essay / Field Notes

How Heavy Metal Fuels Indigenous Revival in Patagonia

Erin Wheeler Streusand
An anthropologist plunges into the world of Patagonian heavy metal music in Argentina to explore how the genre relates to language and cultural revitalization.
Green, leafy trees grow out of a swamp that has green growth in the center of it.
poem / Identities

Tallahassee Ghazal

Noland Blain
Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place—and that “most of us are breathing.”
A person in sunglasses and a white N-95 face mask stands in a street holding a sign that reads: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Behind them, other demonstrators congregate.
op-ed / Viewpoint

Fighting for Justice for the Dead—and the Living

Sean D. Tallman, Ashley Smith, Ariel Gruenthal-Rankin, and Donovan Adams
A group of forensic anthropologists argues their field must reject the myth of pure objectivity and challenge systemic inequities through advocacy and activism.
A gray-haired man sitting in a chair outside hits a chunk of flint stone with a hammer. The black and white photo is from 1923.
poem / Reflections

Debitage

jade lomas-trejo
Using an original poetic form, a poet chips away at a difficult history—becoming an agent of her own remaking and more than just an estranged daughter.
Underneath a large orange tent, a man wearing a backward baseball hat, red handkerchief, and white shirt and apron uses both hands to fry flatbread on multiple burners. Behind him, a small group wearing dark clothes and black baseball hats congregates.
essay / In Flux

Tracing Roti’s Pasts, Presents, and Futures

Mariam Durrani and Nilosree Biswas
The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world.
Rolling hills feature elongated human-made rows in the landscape covered by green grass, with a bright blue sky and scattered white clouds above.
essay / Pastimes

In Iron Age Britain, Descent Was Matrilineal

Rachel Pope
New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles and social structures in ancient Europe.
The silhouette of a person shows against the deep magenta and red hues of a sunset, with the sky otherwise dark. An island rests in the distance.
poem / Counterpoint

Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene

Sneha Subramanian Kanta
The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene.
A black-and-white photograph depicts three people ascending the steps of a brick building. At the foot of the stairs, a small crowd mills about.
interview / Reflections

David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism

Josh Reno and Holly High
When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy.
essay / Field Notes

Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya

Kirsten Jenkins, Kieran McNulty, Joshua Siembo, and George Umoja
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history.
A yellow-leafed tree stands among others that have lost their leaves. In front, a field of brown grasses stretches. A blue sky with fluffy white clouds is above.
poem / Dwelling

Pequi Winds

Jacqueline Ferraz de Lima
A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations.
A landscape of tall grasses is silhouetted beneath a reddish night sky studded with innumerable stars that form a rippling trail in the sky.
essay / Field Notes

Launching Starship in South Texas

Anna Szolucha
An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world’s largest rocket—and the wide range of responses it elicited from people.
Large billows of white smoke and a fiery tail of exhaust are emitted from a white cylinder as it lifts off into a gray sky.
essay / Field Notes

A Spacecraft’s Dance From French Guiana to Jupiter

Karlijn Korpershoek
As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents.
Against a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a hand holds aloft a hollow cube filled with white, black, red, green, and yellow electronic components.
essay / Field Notes

The First Space Launch for Mauritius

Peter Timko
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.
A bright arc of orange light carves across a deep blue night sky.
essay / Wayfinding

How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth

Anna Szolucha
In a series of essays, a collaborative research project brings together “space anthropologists” to investigate how communities around the globe are grappling with the current boom in outer space exploration.
A pane of glass blurs pink, red and white, and other colored tulips that appear behind it.
poem / Standpoints

Emic/Etic

Khando Langri
A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.
A woman in a blue sweater, tan dress, and tall brown boots pushes a dolly loaded with a great ape skeleton through a white room full of taxidermic animals.
op-ed / Standpoints

Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains

Alexandra Kralick and Stephanie Canington
Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. Now anthropologists are advocating to pay similar respects to primates.