In I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, translated from the Chinese by Jack Hargreaves and forthcoming in October from Astra House, Hu Anyan collects essays he began writing while feeling stuck and unfulfilled in the many short-term jobs he moved through as a young man. Turning to reading and writing for solace, he began sharing his stories and connecting with readers. “Supposing work is something we are compelled to do, a concession of our personal will,” writes Hu, “then the other parts of life—those that remain true to our desires, that we choose to pursue, in whatever form they take—might be called freedom.” Compose a series of vignettes that look back on several past jobs you’ve had. What do they say about your work-life balance?

“Sometimes she sat at the foot of the illness and asked it questions. Had it stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Had she been able to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people?” Patricia Lockwood’s second novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, forthcoming in September from Riverhead Books, chronicles a young woman’s hallucinatory descent as she navigates a loss of self during a global pandemic. Think back to the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the ways in which the rapidly changing world reconfigured your idea of self and your mindset as you dealt with social distancing and lockdown, sickness and death. Write a short story encapsulating a character’s loss of self during a period of social upheaval that catalyzes a gradual distancing from known reality. Whether your character sees this as a chance to start over or a moment to stand their ground, what do these actions reveal about their personality?

Sparrows have appeared in poetry throughout time—from Catullus writing about Lesbia’s pet sparrow to works by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Charles Bukowski. In Susan Howe’s Penitential Cries, forthcoming in September from New Directions, the concluding poem, “Chipping Sparrow,” with its clipped pacing and sound, as if to mimic a sparrow’s, illuminates a clear-eyed but lyrical notion of time as well as the physicality of life as experienced from the eighty-eight-year-old poet’s perspective. “Left the body // Drowsd a little / Done with soul / – // What to think / Dusting up crown // Garment mirror / Pull me close / – // Quietness and calm / Rest and rejoice // No more doubt / Astonishing!” Spend some time browsing through poems that mention this ubiquitous bird and note the range of symbolism: eros, love, humility, fragility. Then write your own sparrow poem that commemorates where you are in your life.

Think of an ordinary object you see almost every day: a chipped coffee mug, a frayed doormat, or the traffic light you always catch red. Write an essay that treats this object as if it were a silent witness to one chapter of your life. Give this object a voice and allow it to narrate this portion of your history in fragments, in terms of what it has seen you gain, what it has seen you lose, and the small, private moments it holds for you. Allow the object’s “voice” to reveal something about you that you rarely admit to others.