In this episode, we speak with Anna Badkhen about To See Beyond, her forthcoming essay collection from Bellevue Literary Press, and the ethical, linguistic, and imaginative labor of writing in a world marked by war, displacement, and ecological collapse.
Drawing on decades of reporting from conflict zones, as well as friendships, landscapes, fossils, myths, and moments of ordinary beauty, Badkhen reflects on wonder not as escape, but as resistance; on language that fractures under catastrophe; and on what it means to remember without turning suffering into spectacle or symbol. We talk about silence as a form of care, myth as both danger and necessity, and why clarity can sometimes be a moral failure.
A former war correspondent whose work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Granta, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, Badkhen is the author of eight books, including Bright Unbearable Reality, longlisted for the National Book Award. Her writing has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
Born in the Soviet Union and now a US citizen, Badkhen is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. This conversation lingers with questions that refuse resolution: how to stay present to suffering without aestheticizing it, how to write when the world no longer makes sense, and what it might mean to keep faith with wonder in an age of devastation.
Learn more about Anna’s work:
Instagram: @annabadkhen
