Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8

All stories

A person in army fatigues walks in front of a looming surveillance tower flanked by high fences topped with barbed wire.
poem / Human Rights

An Order for My Backpack and Three Stages of Nowhere

Don Edward Walicek
A poet moves through rituals of silence and erasure that permeate the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In front of a black sign with white letters that reads "Defend Life & Human Rights," people hold hand-made signs.
poem / Human Rights

Translation Notes

Eric Abalajon
A translator’s notes are refashioned into a poem calling for justice for Indigenous peoples in the Philippines displaced by a megadam.
Beneath a blue sky with a few wispy white clouds, the glassy, rippling deep-blue surface of the ocean stretches to the horizon.
essay / Human Rights

Home-Carrying—A Repatriation Trip to Vanuatu 100 Years in the Making

Jenny L. Davis
An anthropologist and poet reflects on a journey of return that tells a larger story about human connection, acts of Indigenous solidarity, and the potential for repair within anthropology.
A stream of clear water pours into an orange bucket. Behind it, two slightly out-of-focus women and a child look on.
essay / Human Rights

How Water Insecurity Impacts Women’s Health

Paula Skye Tallman, Stroma Cole, Gabriela Salmón-Mulanovich, and Binahayati Rusyidi
Anthropologists and local activists in Indonesia and Peru uncover links between water scarcity and gendered violence, and work together to lessen the harms of gender inequality.
Dozens of papers with text on them are punctured and strung horizontally on wires.
poem / Human Rights

Archived Haints

Alma Simba
SAPIENS’ 2024 poet-in-residence conjures the voices of those imprisoned in archives.
Two people sit face-to-face on a bench and sign with each other. Behind them, a mural shows the outline of a human ear with Arabic writing inside it.
essay / Human Rights

Gaza’s Deaf Community in the Face of Genocide

Timothy Y. Loh
An anthropologist who works with deaf communities in the Arabic-speaking Middle East argues that ending Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation of Palestine is a matter of disability justice.
An officer dressed in black, wearing a baseball-style hat and balaclava, with a machine gun slung across his chest, stands before a gray concrete building.
essay / Human Rights

When a Message App Became Evidence of Terrorism

Onur Arslan
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence.
A young person holding a red sack stands atop an enormous heap of trash, backdropped by white smoke from burning garbage and mountains in the distance.
essay / Human Rights

Albania’s Waste Collectors and the Fight for Dignity

Arba Bekteshi
An anthropologist shines a light on Romani and Egyptian recyclers whose work has been made illegal, calling for a new way of viewing humanity’s garbage.
Amid a crowd, a woman with dark auburn hair and a black jacket embraces a child who faces away from the camera and wears a jacket with blue cartoon monkeys on it.
essay / Human Rights

Inside Russia’s Campaign to Steal and Indoctrinate Ukrainian Children

Greta Uehling
An anthropologist investigates an insidious side of Russia’s genocide against Ukrainians meant to shatter families: snatching children and occupying their minds.
Several people wearing matching brown jumpsuits sit on a long brown bench, holding landline phones and facing a large clear wall. On the other side of the first window, a person with a white headscarf on cries while holding a phone.
essay / Human Rights

How Israeli Prisons Terrorize Palestinians—Inside and Outside Their Walls

Basil Farraj
An anthropologist in the West Bank explains how Israel’s prison regime dehumanizes Palestinians, who nevertheless dream of freedom and resist erasure.
A header image on a cellphone of several people wearing military uniforms and holding hands is above a yellow logo and white text that reads, “Israel Defense Forces.” White text underneath reads, “Official IDF Twitter account. We tweet real-time information and updates in 7 languages—choose yours.”
essay / Human Rights

The Viral Atrocities Posted by Israeli Soldiers

Sophia Goodfriend
Tracing 75 years of Israeli war photography, an anthropologist explains how images that reframe disproportionate violence as proof of victory have intensified in the war on Gaza that erupted in 2023.
A large, tan cardboard box sits on a shelf with a label that reads “C2” below it. On two small pieces of black tape on the box’s front side, white letters read “Infant” and “Name Once Known.”
poem / Human Rights

Infant, Name Once Known

Jenny L. Davis
A poet-anthropologist of the Chickasaw Nation honors infant remains historically used in teaching collections at the University of Illinois.
A person with short black hair looks away from the viewer out of a window on the room’s back wall. Between the person and the window is a narrow bed with blue, pink, and red linens.
video / Human Rights

What It’s Like to Grow Old on the Margins

Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori
In a brief documentary, an anthropologist provides a glimpse into the precarious lives of poor older Peruvians whose experiences mirror those of countless elders around the world.
An older person wearing a black headscarf and embroidered skirt sits on the ground, resting against a concrete wall.
essay / Human Rights

Living as Stateless Palestinians in Jordan

Michael Vicente Pérez
Israel’s war on Gaza that erupted in 2023 continues a long history of systemic displacement of Palestinians. Over 2 million Palestinian refugees currently live in Jordan in indefinite exile, tens of thousands without citizenship in any country.
Shot from above, a close-up photograph features a cluster of flowers with white petals and yellow centers with green blades of grass growing out of a rough, rocky plot of brown soil.
poem / Human Rights

Expert Witness Reviews Exhibits for Asylum Proceedings, Franco-González Class Member

Whitney L. Duncan
A poet-anthropologist who has been an expert witness in asylum proceedings for Mexican nationals resists dehumanizing legal and political language to make space for the humanity of asylum-seekers.
With human figures painted as dark silhouettes, a large mural depicts a soldier wearing a helmet and large backpack reaching toward two children holding flags with orange, white, and green horizontal stripes. They stand against a bright yellow, orange, and red background with three black helicopters—one displaying the same flag—flying overhead.
poem / Human Rights

This Militarization

Toiba Naseema
A poet-anthropologist conveys her life when she was coming of age under the increasing mobilization of military forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
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