Featured in this folio:
“What is the artist’s job? To make war. The artist’s job is unrelenting war on evil…What is the artist’s role? To struggle. To tell the truth…Art is an ideological reflection of the world”
—Amiri Baraka, from a speech titled On Art & Politics, 2004
We are honored to represent the souls in these selections for our 43rd iteration of nonfiction in ANMLY. In this together we are Worldwalkers and through this purgatory, there’s a hesitation to admit despite perpetually projected disgust going every which way in their own way, that it is not an uncaring place nor an impossible task. It is actually rather easy to see globalized glowing bodies gathered more than ever imagined within infinite galactic whirlpools of ever-present real world conditions, and looming in the background, the silhouette of what isn’t just another faint mimicry that once sparked the first echoes circa decades, centuries. Much as I hesitate to admit, I still believe in the dynamo-harmony of dynamic momentum in tandem from below. Acceleration. An ode to the belief that acts of escalating compassion create pathways through this annihilation in//de//spite the fuelless fumes; pandemonium. No metaphor. No allegory. To call this hope or optimism is a fallacy insulting the killed and their living.
Let it be a crystallization of faith honoring will.
Witness these shards.
Between now and next, live and make war.
Then come back.
Then again, it could be better if ya couldn’t.
Thaer Husien
October 2026
“…there are many writers who want to claim that because they write, because they are artists, they are excused from participation on the physical level from whatever happens in the community. I consider that a bunch of bullshit. I am really hostile towards that attitude, because, if we realize that we live the way we do today, we are the pawns, finally, that we are because we are powerless. Then, in establishing the power we need, which would help to determine our own life where even artists can function as artists without the pressures we function under, then by definition everybody is involved -the child, the mother, young girl, the young boy, the man, the farmer, the artist, whoever else. We are all committed to values which have nothing to do with writing. When we write, we express those values.
I believe very strongly that any artistic or, in particular, any literary activity-unless it is an invitation to action-ceases to have any validity. It should mean that the writer himself or herself is willing to participate on the physical level in terms of whatever life it is that he or she is talking about, because there are too many writers who-to use a Western cliche-live in a literary tower or little closet, where they actually use writing as an excuse not to participate in anything. To put it mildly, I am hostile to that attitude, because I think unless you are willing to participate on the physical plane then you have no business to say anything to anyone.”
—Keorapetse “Bra Willie” Kgositsile, from an interview titled, With Bloodstains to Testify, 1978
ANMLY #43 Nonfiction Team
Mizzy Hussain, Nonfiction Co-Editor
Thaer Husien, Nonfiction Co-Editor
leena aboutaleb, Nonfiction & Poetry Reader
Shuchi Agrawal, Nonfiction & Fiction Reader
Sloane Cutflower Allen, Nonfiction Reader
Fred Banks, Nonfiction Reader
Ridwan Fasasi, Nonfiction Reader
noam keim, Nonfiction Reader
Celia Lan, Nonfiction Reader
Haley Truss, Nonfiction Reader