A non-profit online literary magazine with a penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers.

Anya Tchoupakov

Aube Rey Lescure

Vince Errico

Colleen Kinder

Off Assignment

Category "Letter to a Stranger": Write a letter to an unshakeable stranger you’ve met along the way, whether traveling across the world, the country, or down the street. 



Category "No Equivalent": What is one word you have come across that resists being ferried over into English? Write about one of these untranslatable words, and the role it has played in your personal geography or voyages. 

Category "Under the Influence": Tell us about the interplay between art and reality, and how the lens of each showed you something interesting about the other. Title your submission along the lines of “Reading [author] in [place]”/ “Listening to [artist] in [place],” etc.

Category "What I Didn’t Say": Revisit the experiences that have stuck with you, the happenings that didn’t bend into the margins of the assignment, but that persist in your memory.

Category "Witching Hour": In this new series, we want to feature lyrical portraits of places at a distinct time of day or night. In contrast to the whirlwind nature of 36-hour travel, we want to indulge in a scene locked in the grasp of one specific time and place.

Who haunts you?

We all harbor thoughts about the strangers at the edges of our lives. Write a letter to an unshakeable stranger you’ve met along the way, whether traveling across the world, the country, or down the street. 

A great “Letter to a Stranger” has some magic to it, and often speaks to more than just what it's directly about. It's never colonialist or judgmental. It is a highly personal narrative that stirs up universal themes. 

Include a title in the “To___” format (for example, “To the Lady at the Subway Turnstile”).

Letter to a Stranger

Teju Cole writes: “The English word translation...descends from the Latin translatus: trans, across or over, and latus, which is the past participle of ferre, to carry, related to the English word ‘ferry.’ The translator, then, is the ferry operator, carrying meaning from words on that shore to words on this shore.”

What is one word you have come across that resists being ferried over in translation? Write about one of these untranslatable words, and the role it has played in your personal geography or voyages. 

No Equivalent

In this new series, we want to feature lyrical portraits of places at a distinct time of day or night. In contrast to the whirlwind nature of 36-hour travel, we want to indulge in a scene locked in the grasp of one specific time and place. Jean Valentine writes about 3 am in New York and Georges Perec writes about 10:30 in Paris. What’s the portrait of a time and place that bewitches you? To get started, use this sentence construction: “X a.m./p.m. in Y place is ____,” and write from there.




Witching Hour

Any writer knows that, often, the most interesting part of the assignment doesn’t make it into the story. Revisit the experiences that have stuck with you, the happenings that didn’t bend into the margins of the assignment, but that persist in your memory. This isn’t a behind-the-scenes travel diary—this is the story behind the story. 



What I Didn’t Say

The art we surround ourselves with affects our reality. What happens when we use authors or artists as guides to our travels, near and far? Which artist’s presence accompanies you down a street or rests with you on a park bench? Tell us about the interplay between art and reality, and how the lens of each showed you something interesting about the other. Title your submission along the lines of “Reading [author] in [place]”/ “Listening to [artist] in [place],” etc.




Off Assignment

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