New Writing on the Riyadh Comedy Festival

Apologies for the last couple weeks of silence—I've been a little busy. I want to share two new pieces of writing with you. One is an article in The Guardian about the Riyadh Comedy Festival:

US comedians defend decision to play in Saudi Arabia: ‘They’re paying me enough to look the other way’

Usual supporters of free speech are under fire for signing on to Riyadh festival despite the government’s human rights abuses

The GuardianSeth Simons

And the other is a poem in Rattle Magazine about (sort of…) the Charlie Kirk killing:

The Killing by Seth Simons - Rattle: Poetry

A few days later I played the video for my students and asked what lessons, if any, we could learn from it. “Don’t kill people,” said Luke. “Don’t kill people in a way that inspires other people to kill people,” said Amalie. “Very good,” I said. “Martin, you’ve been quiet. What do you think?”

Rattle PoetrySeth Simons

Thanks for reading, and we'll be back to our normal programming soon.