Category: Essays

  • Katherine Schwartz

    The Strangeness of Grieving Liam Payne

    I saw the news at 6 pm as I closed my tabs and signed off to leave the office.  “Did you just see this headline?” I asked my colleague, Geoff, who mirrored my astonishment. Our other coworkers exchanged looks—clearly we were the only ones young enough to care about the boy band. He laughed nervously […]

  • Katherine Schwartz

    What Happened in Vegas?

    I spent my five hour Spirit Airlines flight to “Sin City” wedged in a middle seat between two rows of a drunken bachelor party, which I attempted to remedy with Spirit’s “BuzzBallz special”–two canned margaritas and some pretzels. We made our rocky landing around 11 pm, three hours later than when we were supposed to arrive. […]

  • Katherine Schwartz

    Funland

    In the summer of 1977, my mother, Page, and her best friend, Lily, ventured to the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. They left the adults behind on the porch to drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and talk about politics. My grandmother, clad in chunky jewelry with a paisley scarf wrapped around her head, barely noticed her […]