Thomas Dai
Uncategorized
Machines for Living (on three films directed by Kogonada: Columbus [Oscilloscope, 2017], After Yang [A24, 2021], and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey [Sony Pictures Releasing, 2025])
IN Fall 2026
Amitav Ghosh’s latest book, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, advances a strong claim about botanical agency. That claim is this: the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) should be considered a […]
Read MoreIN Summer 2026
Reviews
“I See It Feelingly”: On Criticism in Dark Times (on Nan Z. Da’s The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear)
Because I teach writing at a university, and because being a writer is presumably a prerequisite for having this job, I am frequently asked what I think identifies someone as […]
Read MoreIN Spring 2026
Reviews
At the Edge of the Sea: Queer Stories of Oceanic Life (on Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures and Lars Horn’s Voice of the Fish: A Lyric Essay)
In 2004, the trans theorist Eva Hayward began studying a species of marine invertebrate, the orange cup coral, or Balanophyllia elegans. Hayward wasn’t a biologist, but a PhD student in […]
Read MoreIN Summer 2023