The Seed Collector’s Daughter and Other Delights from the Nowruz Journal

Photo by Persis Karim

The Nowruz Journal, a periodical of Persian arts and letters that is a mere two years old, has been named a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Firecracker Award for Best Debut: Magazine.

The Power of Language and the Language of Power

If we must die, O let us nobly die,/So that our precious blood may not be shed/In vain

—Claude McKay

In a burst of cultural ambition while in high school, I bought three boxed set classical recordings. Two were operas: Puccini’s La Bohème and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The other was a symphony. I’d never seen a symphony that needed more than one LP, so I had to have that. I didn’t know the composer, but he was Russian, and “modern,” and the cover of the box had a photograph of Leningrad under siege in World War II.