Westerners often see the Middle East as synonymous with war and strife. Iain Akerman has devoted his career to uncovering the region’s multifaceted underground cultures.

In this conversation, writer Richard Smyth and The Fiction Desk editor Rob Redman talk about short fiction as performance, voice and authenticity, and the intersection of storytelling and history.

A conversation with Liz Lin of The Salt Collective about Asian American communities, the complexities of hyphenated identities, and the future of race relations in the United States.