An Interview With Jen Orpin: Markers of Time
“When you’re looking at the paintings, it’s your view, it’s your journey.”
November Issue, 2026
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant: Letter from the editor, November, 2026
November ramblings.
The Ghost in White: Edo Horror and the Birth of Sadako
In the age of endlessly reproducible digital images, the deeper metaphor feels even more familiar:
The haunted image no longer needs a well, a cassette, or even a television. It only needs somewhere to be seen—and someone willing to pass it on.
Bonus Track: In the Street again
Bonus track.
Useless Reportage: Notes on Helen Levitt’s In the Street
“If in the film the streets seem to be mostly battleground, her photographs construe it more as a theatre. Levitt was after the epiphanic universal that might emerge from the quotidian.”
Three Stops
“The cemetery stood on an island. People said that one day the island would disappear beneath the water. My father wanted to record the place before that happened. So we began keeping notes and drawings of everything we noticed there.”
Snake Journey
A beautiful meditation on personal and communal memory, art, and an unfathomable landscape from poet Michael Ladd.
Fiction: Moving Day
The sixth trip up the stairs I see them. Sometimes you can go the whole day without seeing anyone, and I thought it was going to be like that. Little did I know.
Raven Season: Karen Clarkson
“The mischievous Raven existed at that time because he always had.”
