April Highlights From Medium’s Newest Writers
Fresh perspectives from every corner of the platform
One of the best parts of browsing Medium is discovering new voices — writers whose perspectives make you think, laugh, learn, or just feel less alone. Every month, we’re highlighting a few stories by writers who’ve hit “publish” for the first time.
This month: a retired science journalist remembers his father; a UX designer applies lessons from their MFA in poetry; and an essayist leaves New York City for greener pastures. Read, highlight, and clap for their words — and give them a follow so you won’t miss their next story.
— and the Creator Support Team @ Medium
“In America, We Were All ‘Russian,’ but Soviet Jewish Identity Has Always Been Complex” by
My family came from Moscow, Russia, which, because it was the seat of the Soviet empire, conferred assumptions about your education level (high) and attitude (snobbish). The city (versus country) distinction felt like the most notable one, and I’d be judged differently compared to, say, someone like fellow Soviet Jew Mila Kunis, whose family is from the smaller city of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Still, most of us had relatives across the region. Because of this Soviet flattening, my family’s background didn’t really feel specifically Russian, not in the way most people understand nationality.
“How an MFA in Poetry Prepared Me for a Career in UX Design” by
The problem with writing the best thing you’ll ever write is that you still have to revise. If you fall in love with a line of a poem you’ve written, you must also understand that someday, after a dozen drafts, that may be the one line that doesn’t work anymore.
A poem can outgrow its best lines just like a design can outgrow an early prototype’s best features.
“Geisthaben: Some Thoughts on Leaving New York” by
I think I am divorcing New York City because my body needs to be allowed a dormant season. I cannot bloom all the time. That is not the rhythm I learned in the foothills of Colorado. But in that same little house I learned about poetry and art and spent many teenage nights yearning for the culture that is everywhere in New York, that suffuses even the plantings in the parks. I fell in love with the spirit of things, with the man-made and the hand-made, with messy humans and all their brilliant creations, with a sense that what is built will be seen by others and should on some level please them. Outside of New York and a few other urban areas, this care for the built environment is hard to find. It is haphazard and clumsy.
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Score Bugs and the UX of America’s Pastime” by
Spending so much time watching baseball and learning the rules in tandem, I realized that the broadcast’s means of representing the scores and bases was important to my education. Called score bugs, this graphic is a rather new innovation in televised sports. ESPN first began using score bugs during their World Cup broadcast in 1994, an idea implemented in soccer matches in the UK (source). Since then, score bugs don’t just communicate the scores of a game. For example, football viewers can also see the number of downs and number of yards needed before a first-down conversion. In sports where possession is a concern, score bugs indicate who has the ball at a particular point in the game.
In baseball, the score bug has evolved to show vital pieces of data about the current state of the game (especially in a sport that relies so much on that data!).
I want to tell a story about Russia. Not the objective truth about that beaten, abused and abusing land — whatever that might be — but my story. This is the first part. It is about my father, and the way his life and death strangely resonates with the past and possible future fate of the country he loved, admired and maybe lost faith in — Russia. And it is about me — his son, who grew up in Norway with that mysterious admiration for Советский Союз — The Soviet Union, who felt its presence, sensed its shadow in the small things and the harrowing changes of a torn-up childhood.
For more resources, advice, and inspiration for writing on Medium, check out the Medium Writers Starter Pack. And as always, thanks for being here and sharing your perspectives.
