Issue 12: Fall 2025

From the Editor

And How Could I Live On (for Betty Shabazz)

by Nikki Giovanni

Erase Genesis (V)

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

Essays/Nonfiction

The 2025 Chowdhury Prize Acceptance Speech

by Claire Dederer

Claire Dederer in Conversation with Maggie Nelson

by Claire Dederer, Maggie Nelson

Essays/Nonfiction

Lock the Door: An Essay on Craft

by Claire Dederer

Erase Genesis (IV)

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

Fire Safety

by Emily Rapp Black

The Lost Film

by Cecil Castellucci, Thit Bitsch

Erase Genesis (III)

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

“Nothing’s Broken,” “So High,” and “Hearing Windows”

by Kim Chinquee

Erase Genesis (II)

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

40 Years of Making Trouble: An Interview with the Guerrilla Girls

by Guerrilla Girls, Jackie DesForges

“Sarah Palmer at the Elk’s Point #9,” and “‘LA’s Famously Bizarre Apartments Could Never Be Built Today’”

by Lynn Melnick

Essays/Nonfiction

Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowells), Part II

by Claude Cahun

Erase Genesis (I)

by Rebecca Gayle Howell

Essays/Nonfiction

An Ode to Fall(ing)

by Rabha Ashry

From the SCR Archives: Bulletin

by Mariah Robbins

Essays/Nonfiction

Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals), Part 1

by Claude Cahun

Air/Light is published quarterly in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California.

The Chowdhury Prize in Literature is an annual international mid-career prize for writers.