Nation Notes

Nation Notes

Walter Mosley joins the editorial board, Dave Zirin becomes the magazine’s first sports correspondent.

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We are proud to announce that Walter Mosley will be joining our editorial board. Mosley is the author of twenty-nine critically acclaimed books, which have been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990 and include Black Betty, A Little Yellow Dog and Cinnamon Kiss, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. Mosley has won numerous awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award, an honor given for works that increase the appreciation and understanding of race in America, as well as a Grammy Award for his liner notes for Richard Pryor…And It’s Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992). Mosley created with New York’s City College a publishing degree program aimed at young urban residents, the only such program in the country. He has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, currently serves on the boards of the Poetry Society of America and TransAfrica, and is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America.

We also take this occasion to announce the creation of a sports department–the first in our magazine’s 143-year history–with Dave Zirin as correspondent. Zirin, who was Press Action’s 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, was called by Robert Lipsyte “the best young sportswriter in the United States.” He is a columnist for SLAM magazine and CNNSI.com, a regular contributor to The Nation and a frequent commentator for the Los Angeles Times. Zirin’s first book, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, has entered its second printing. He is also the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports. Zirin is a frequent contributor to ESPN’s Outside the Lines, ESPN Classic, the BBC’s Extratime and Democracy Now! Zirin will continue to write regularly for The Nation on the intersection of politics and sports.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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