All posts tagged: Essay

Six Degrees of Interconnection, Orion Magazine

Published by Isaac Yuen

I’m pleased to have another short essay, “6 Degrees of Interconnection”, published in the latest Orion. Despite the title of the piece, I promise it is 100% Kevin Bacon free. Here’s a description on the rest of the issue: “In this issue, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores how language can affirm our kinship with the natural world, and John Landretti considers where the line lies between what is real and what is perceived. Other features include Jeremy Miller on an ecological experiment to create a wilderness area, and Anjali Vaidya on what it means to adapt in a post-colonial world. Also: poetry by Sierra Golden, Kimiko Hahn, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and James Thomas Stevens; plus Simen Johan’s lush photographs of wild animals and Jesse Chehak’s photographs of luminous water and ice in the North and West Atlantic.” I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Bread Loaf Orion conference with Anjali Vaidya, so I’m naturally delighted to have my work featured alongside hers. Titled “Native or Invasive”, Vaidya’s essay navigates two tangled histories, one personal and …

Rhythm, Hippocampus Magazine

Published by Isaac Yuen

I’m pleased to have a flash piece published in the January issue of Hippocampus, an online magazine dedicated to entertain, educate, and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. Rhythm is a 750-word meditation on the “zone” one can attain while playing a sport or writing a story, along with the fleeting joy that ensues from tapping into the flow. There is a part towards the end where I compare this mode with what it might be like to be an animal, of being wholly present, fully embodied in the here and now, the beauty in that certainty of being: “… For one length, the twenty-second out of the thirty-four I would eventually complete, I was a seal, dark and torpid, and my arms were fins with which I used to shape the world. For one length, just one, I shed all meaning, instead was meaning, until nothing was left but presence, before strength failed and form broke, and I was human once again.” Read the Piece Here

The Camunico Annual: On Cultural Leadership

Published by Isaac Yuen

“… by taking a more post-modern approach, we have tried to bring together a series of articles that initially may seem unrelated but which, we believe, all contribute to offering perspectives from which readers are invited to allow their own ideas to develop; ideas about the nature of change around us, and how we, as individuals, organizations and institutions might thrive within that change.” – Camunico Annual, p.7 I was recently asked to contribute an edited version of my essay, Playing to Tie, to the inaugural issue of the Camunico Annual. Camunico is an Amsterdam-based leadership firm exploring “the cultural changes of our time, and how [they] influence individuals, businesses and leadership.” The short publication is now available free online, and my piece is accompanied by the following features: Joe Zammit-Lucia argues for the need to redefine leadership for the 21st century; Renowned artist Anish Kapoor speaks about lessons artists can offer the business world; Rob Wijnberg speaks on the future of journalism; An exploration of ancient tea ceremonies and their relevance to contemporary leadership. Each article is an intriguing …

On Praise and Toads Revisited

Published by Isaac Yuen

I wrote a bit last year about my problems with handling praise. While that is still a work in progress, I’m thrilled to announce that one of my essays, Inspirations from a Toad, has won the 2013 Web of Life Foundation competition out of nearly 500 entries. WOLF runs the annual contest seeking works with fresh thinking on political, social, and environmental issues. 2013’s theme was “an aspirational future”. The piece, part narrative and part personal meditation, combines ideas from Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, George Orwell’s essay I wrote about last year on Ekostories, with my experiences volunteering with The Lower Mainland Green Team, a local grassroots environmental group that boasts more than 1,800 members doing great stewardship work at parks and urban farms. I would especially like to thank my writing colleagues for their careful readings, thoughtful suggestions, and swift kicks to get me to put my work out there – You know who you are. Deep gratitude, as always, and thanks for the support. Read the essay here

George Orwell’s Some Thoughts on the Common Toad

Published by Isaac Yuen

As an aspiring essayist, it shames me to admit that I have only recently become familiar with the narrative and critical essays of George Orwell. While I have read his manifesto on clear writing, “Politics and the English Language,” I remained ignorant on the bulk of his work until a chance meeting with a shelf in a very comfortable section of the library. It was a joy to discover for the first time, Orwell’s quietly devastating account of time spent at a London workhouse in The Spike, his reflections on the ugly facets of colonialism in Shooting an Elephant, and his comment on the futility of vengeance, distilled into one waxy yellow face, in Revenge is Sour. Whatever the subject matter, Orwell had a knack for getting to its root with a concrete metaphor or an unforgettable statement. As an essayist, there is no greater skill than to be able to convey exactly what one intends, vividly and without doubt. For this is the writer’s truth, and Orwell spoke it as well as anyone. Nature appreciation …