Featured Archived
Seasons Episodes
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
Announcement

After ten years of exploring humanity in all its diversity, SAPIENS has concluded its publishing chapter.

While the magazine has closed, its living archive endures—open to all and preserving the many ideas, voices, and discoveries that deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.

Window

A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora gives voice to the power of collective memory and place.

Preserving Black Women’s Stories as a Labor of Love

An interview with anthropologist Irma McClaurin dives into the process and meaning behind creating an archival home for Black feminist work.

Middle Ground

A poet-bioarchaeologist of the African diaspora confronts echoes of the Middle Passage in contemporary anti-Black environments.

Are We So Different?

A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora responds to anti-Black racism and the question of race.

Did Aliens Build the Pyramids? And Other Racist Theories

Pseudoarchaeology, conspiracy theories that ancient civilizations were founded by aliens or the denizens of Atlantis, are more than just silly—they’re dangerous.

They’ll Steal Your Eyes, They’ll Steal Your Teeth

In a fictionalized story based on long-term ethnographic research, an anthropologist of the African diaspora interrogates a history of colonialism, exploitation, racial inequality, power, and types of local talk in Madagascar.

Lead Me to Life: Voices of the African Diaspora

Through poetry and prose, anthropologists of the African diaspora unveil the echoes of the past in the present.

Elder

A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora travels from a northern city to his ancestral home in the rural U.S. South—both as a memory and a belonging.

Lessons From Mars—and Jamaica—on Sovereignty

The billionaire space race thrives on romantic ideas of colonizing “the last frontier.” An anthropologist looks to Jamaican histories of colonization to show why such narratives are so dangerous—and offers an alternate vision of Black freedom in the Sovereign State of Accompong.

Five Questions About Writing the African Diaspora

In this free live event, anthropologist and SAPIENS poet-in-residence Justin Wright, answers five questions about the African Diaspora poetry and prose project.