WRITING

The Making of the Buru Quartet: How Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s preeminent novelist, managed to compose his masterpiece while exiled on a remote prison island, The Believer Magazine, March 27, 2025/Issue 149

"Clarification": Rigoberta Menchú Paved the Way for an Opening in Guatemala (an excerpt from Flights), Jacobin, May 12, 2024

"Militant Indians": Fifty years ago, the American Indian Movement occupied the site of a historic massacre. They won real gains in the face of brutal counterinsurgency tactics, Boston Review, July 20, 2023

"Embodiment": Angela Davis in Los Angeles, Jacobin, April 1, 2023

"Exquisite Sleaze": A Novel the CIA Spent a Fortune to Suppress, Public Books, March 28, 2023

"Universal Language": Diego Rivera in San Francisco, Jacobin, Oct 25, 2022
​
"Wake Up, America": Paul Robeson in Peekskill, Jacobin, July 18, 2022 (more)(more)

Our Man in Hollywood: Graham Greene, Vietnam & the CIA, The Baffler, June 15, 2022 (more)

The Violent Years: Poets George & Mary Oppen, Black Shirts & the FBI, in Poetry Foundation, Jan 18, 2021 (more)

Bullet & Grenades: Translations of Salomon de la Selva, No Contact, Jan 16, 2021

"Amplifier": Lorraine Hansberry, Unapologetic Radical, Jacobin, Dec 16, 2020

"Infiltrated": The Murder of Malcolm X, Jacobin, July 17, 2020 (Italiano, India)

There is No Writer Quite Like Arundhati Roy, Jacobin, May 20, 2020 (en español)
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Why We Shouldn't Promise to Vote for Any Democrat Besides Bernie--Yet, Newsweek, Feb 13, 2020

Propaganda, Anti-Propaganda: on The Report, Dianne Feinstein & the CIA Onscreen, The Baffler, Dec 6, 2019 (en español)(related)

​John Berger & The Cold War (Finks excerpt, French), Point de Graissage, Dec 2019

"Hard Choices": How Democrats Sowed the Seeds of the Border Crisis, or Dana Frank in Honduras, Truthdig, Aug 29, 2019

On the Run: Pablo Neruda's Exile Marked One of the 20th Century's Greatest Literary Chase Scenes & the Cold War's First Global Manhunt, The Poetry Foundation, July 8, 2019 (more)

In the Land of Unrealities: On the CIA's Mastery of Fake News, Truthdig, January 31, 2019 (more, more)

How the CIA Sponsored Indian Magazines That Engaged the Country's Best Writers, The Wire (India), March 16, 2017

George Plimpton & "Papa" Hemingway in Cuba, Guernica, January 2, 2017

Fifty Years of Disquietude: On Gabriel García Márquez’s tour as an accidental propagandist, The Baffler, December 6, 2016 (more)(more)

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, by Robert Reich, San Francisco Chronicle, October 9, 2015

The Oyster War, by Summer Brennan, San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2015

Notes on the Death of Culture, by Mario Vargas Llosa, San Francisco Chronicle, August 19, 2015

Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, by Andrew Cockburn, San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2015 (quoted on cover)

Future Crimes, by Marc Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle, March 4, 2015

Thieves of State, by Sarah Chayes, San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2015

Back Channel: Stephen Carter's New Thriller, San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2014

Un-Obsequious: Glenn Greenwald & Edward Snowden, San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, 2014

Commencement Speakers & Free Speech, The New Republic, May 16, 2014

"Imperial Methods": Peter Matthiessen in Nepal, Boston Review, May 7, 2014

Fidelity: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Fidel Castro, Al Jazeera America, April 19, 2014

"Ars Politica": Octavio Paz at 100, Dissent, March 25, 2014

Censorship by Attrition: Google, Occupy Nigeria & Henry Miller, Boston Review, September 25, 2013 (more)

Lit & Wit at Mayor's Awards, Wall Street Journal, April 2013

Kill Anything That Moves: Nick Turse on the U.S. in Vietnam, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 10, 2013

The Matter with White People: Joan Walsh on the Hard Hat Riots, San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 27, 2012

Cairo Revisited: Naguib Mahfouz & Egypt’s Uprising, Daily Beast, July, 2012

The Paris Review, the Cold War & the CIA, Salon.com, May 27, 2012 (responses here, here, here; listed here & here)(German)

Almost Invisible: New Poems from Mark Strand, NPR.com, May 3, 2012

NYPD Blues: How Police Repression Helps Occupy Wall Street, Guernica, September 29, 2011 (original, more, more)

Killed With Kindness: Cambodia's Curse by Joel Brinkley, The New York Times Book Review, June 26, 2011

No Mean Preacher: Robert Aitken Roshi, Last Interview, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2011

Responsibility to Protect: Mac McClelland in Burma, Guernica, March, 2011

Wikiphobia: Is Wikileaks anti-US? Guernica, Dec. 16, 2010

Toward a Global Canon of the Arts, World Policy Journal, Fall 2010 (Response, Big Think)

The Nobel Prize & President Obama's Legitimacy Problem on the Left, Guernica, October 9, 2009

Limits to My Self-Importance, (David Frum) Esquire Russia, January 2009

Le ‘soft power’ est-il de retour? With Joseph Nye, Courrier International, France, November 2008

Un-Veiled: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's U.S. Debut, Village Voice, March 10, 2007

Refugee Politics: Burma's Patriots as U.S. Terrorists, (on Burma) San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, February 25, 2007

Seeds of Revolt: Man who led Haitian slave uprising paved way for independence, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 21, 2007 (reprinted, Guernica)

Rules of Engagement (on conservation in Burma), The New Republic, September 26, 2006

The Terror Suspect’s Advocate, New York Magazine, September 26, 2005

Guernica First Anniversary Letter, Guernica, 2005

Bryher's Visa For Avalon Reissued, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov 21, 2004

Lula's Dream: Five Proposals from Brazil's Da Silva to Change History, Criticas, March/April 2004

​The Problem with the Marquis de Sade, Sinner, Killing the Buddha, Feb 2002
​  POEMS
"Of Fasting," Paris Review, Spring 2003

"Composed in Your Absence," The Nation/"Discovery" Prize, May 2003

​"Spectral Evidence," Agni, July 2004

"Croatoan," Paris Review, Spring 2005

For interviews, go here.